












BE ALB¥ 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALUS-S 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltt. 

TORONTO 


s/ 


B E A L B Y 

A HOLIDAY 




hT g. wells 


AUTHOR OF “the WIFE OF SIB 
ISAAC HARMAN,” ETC. 


^etp gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


1922 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



COPYEIGHT, 1914, BY P. F. COLLIEK &> SoW. 


COPYBIQHT, 1915, 
By H. G. wells. 


Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1913. 

Reprinted March. 1915. April, 1915 
May, 1915. July, 1915. August, 1915. 


do 




FERRIS 

PRINTING COMPANY 
NEW YORK CITY 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Young Bealby goes to Shonts . . . 1 
II. A Week-End at Shonts 22 

III. The Wanderers 56 

IV. The Unobtrusive Parting .... 95 

V. The Seeking of Bealby 131 

VI. Bealby and the Tramp 190 

VII. The Battle of Crayminster .... 226 

VIII. How Bealby Explained . . . r . 263 


V 




B E A L B Y 


BEALBY 


CHAPTER I 

YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 

§1 

The cat is the offspring of a cat and the dog 
of a dog, but butlers and lady^s maids do not 
reproduce their kind. They have other duties. 

So their successors have to be sought among 
the prolific, and particularly among the prolific 
on great estates. Such are gardeners, but not 
under-gardeners, gamekeepers, and coachmen — 
but not lodge people, because their years are too 
great and their lodges too small. And among 
those to whom this opportunity of entering ser- 
vice came was young Bealby, who was the stepson 
of Mr. Darling, the gardener of Shouts. 

Everyone knows the glories of Shouts. Its 
fagade. Its two towers. The great marble pond. 
The terraces where the peacocks walk and the 
lower lake with the black and white swans. The 
great park and the avenue. The view of the 
river winding away across the blue country. 
And of the Shonts Velasquez — but that is now 
in America. And the Shonts Rubens, which is 

B 1 


BEALBY 


in the National Gallery. And the Shonts por- 
celain. And the Shonts past history; it was a 
refuge for the old faith ; it had priest’s holes and 
secret passages. And how at last the Marquis 
had to let Shonts to the Laxtons — the Pep- 
tonized Milk and Baby Soother people — for a 
long term of years. It was a splendid chance for 
any boy to begin his knowledge of service in so 
great an establishment, and only the natural 
perversity of human nature can explain the violent 
objection young Bealby took to anything of the 
sort. He did. He said he did not want to be a 
servant, and that he would not go and be a good 
boy and try his very best in that state of life to 
which it had pleased God to call him at Shonts. 
On the contrary. 

He communicated these views suddenly to his 
mother as she was preparing a steak and kidney 
pie in the bright little kitchen of the gardener’s 
cottage. He came in with his hair all ruffled and 
his face hot and distinctly dirty, and his hands 
in his trousers pockets in the way he had been 
repeatedly told not to. 

Mother,” he said, ^H’m not going to be a 
steward’s boy at the house anyhow, not if you 
tell me to, not till you’re blue in the face. So 
that’s all about it.” 

This delivered, he remained panting, having no 
further breath left in him. 

His mother was a thin firm woman. She 
paused in her rolling of the dough until he had 
finished, and then she made a strong broadening 
sweep of the rolling pin, and remained facing him, 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 3 


leaning forward on that implement with her head 
a little on one side. 

^^You will do/^ she said, whatsoever your 
father has said you will do.^’ 

isn^t my father/^ said young Bealby. 

His mother gave a snapping nod of the head 
expressive of extreme determination. 

Anyhow I ain^t going to do it/^ said young 
Bealby, and feeling the conversation was difficult 
to sustain he moved towards the staircase door 
with a view to slamming it. 

You’ll do it,” said his mother, right enough.” 

'^You see whether I do,” said young Bealby, 
and then got in his door-slam rather hurriedly 
because of steps outside. 

Mr. Darling came in out of the sunshine a few 
moments later. He was a large, many-pocketed, 
earthy-whiskered man with a clean-shaven de- 
termined mouth, and he carried a large pale 
cucumber in his hand, 
tole him,” he said. 

“What did he say ?” asked his wife. 

“Nuthin’,” said Mr. Darhng. 

“’E says ’e won’t,” said Mrs. Darling. 

Mr. Darling regarded her thoughtfully for a 
moment. 

“I never see such a boy,” said Mr. Darling. 
“Why — ’e’s got to.” 

§2 

But young Bealby maintained an obstinate 
fight against the inevitable. 

He had no gift of lucid exposition. “I ain’t 


4 


BEALBY 


going to be a servant/^ he said. don^t see what 
right people have making a servant of me.’^ 

“You got to be something/' said Mr. Darling. 

“Everybody's got to be something/' said Mrs. 
Darling. 

“Then let me be something else/' said young 
Bealby. 

“/ dessay you'd like to be a gentleman/' said 
Mr. Darling. 

“I wouldn't mind/' said young Bealby. 

“You got to be what your opportunities give 
you," said Mr. Darling. 

Young Bealby became breathless. “Why 
shouldn't I be an engine driver?" he asked. 

“All oily," said his mother. “And getting 
yourself killed in an accident. And got to pay 
fines. You'd like to be an engine driver." 

“Or a soldier." 

“Oo! — a Swaddy!" said Mr. Darling de- 
cisively. 

“Or the sea." 

“With that weak stummik of yours," said Mrs. 
Darling. 

“Besides which," said Mr. Darling, “it's been 
arranged for you to go up to the 'ouse the very 
first of next month. And your box and everything 
ready." 

Young Bealby became very red in the face. 
“I won't go," he said very faintly. 

“You will," said Mr. Darling, “if I 'ave to 
take you by the collar and the slack of your 
breeches to get you there." 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 5 


§3 

The heart of young Bealby was a coal of fire 
within his breast as — unassisted — he went 
across the dewy park up to the great house, 
whither his box was to follow him. 

He thought the world a “rotten show.’’ 

He also said, apparently to two does and a 
fawn, “If you think I’m going to stand it, you 
know, you’re JOLLY-well mistaken.” 

I do not attempt to justify his prejudice against 
honourable usefulness in a domestic capacity. 
He had it. Perhaps there is something in the 
air of Highbury, where he had spent the past 
eight years of his life, that leads to democratic 
ideals. It is one of those new places where es- 
tates seem almost forgotten. Perhaps too there 
was something in the Bealby strain. . . . 

I think he would have objected to any employ- 
ment at all. Hitherto he had been a remarkably 
free boy with a considerable gusto about his free- 
dom. Why should that end? The little village 
mixed school had been a soft job for his Cockney 
wits, and for a year and a half he had been top 
boy. Why not go on being top boy ? 

Instead of which, under threats, he had to go 
across the sunlit corner of the park, through 
that slanting morning sunlight which had been 
so often the prelude to golden days of leafy wan- 
derings ! He had to go past the corner of the 
laundry where he had so often played cricket 
with the coachman’s boys (already swallowed 
up into the working world), he had to follow the 


6 


BEALBY 


laundry wall to the end of the kitchen, and there, 
where the steps go down and underground, he 
had to say farewell to the sunlight, farewell to 
childhood, boyhood, freedom. He had to go down 
and along the stone corridor to the pantry, and 
there he had to ask for Mr. Mergleson. He 
paused on the top step and looked up at the blue 
sky across which a hawk was slowly drifting. 
His eyes followed the hawk out of sight beyond a 
cypress bough, but indeed he was not thinking 
about the hawk, he was not seeing the hawk; 
he was struggling with a last wild impulse of his 
ferial nature. '‘Why not sling it?^^ his ferial 
nature was asking. "Why not even now — do 
a hunk?'^ 

It would have been better for him perhaps 
and better for Mr. Mergleson and better for 
Shonts if he had yielded to the whisper of the 
Tempter. But his heart was heavy within him, 
and he had no lunch. And never a penny. One 
can do but a very little bunk on an empty belly ! 
" Must was written all over him. He went down 
the steps. 

The passage was long and cool and at the end 
of it was a swing door. Through that and then 
to the left, he knew one had to go, past the still- 
room and so to the pantry. The maids were at 
breakfast in the stillroom with the door open. 
The grimace he made in passing was intended 
rather to entertain than to insult, and anyhow a 
chap must do something with his face. And then 
he came to the pantry and into the presence of 
Mr. Mergleson. 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 7 


Mr. Mergleson was iix his shirt-sleeves and 
generally dishevelled, having an early cup of tea 
in an atmosphere full of the bleak memories of 
overnight. He was an ample man with a large 
nose, a vast under lip and mutton-chop side-whisk- 
ers. His voice would have suited a succulent 
parrot. He took out a gold watch from his waist- 
coat pocket and regarded it. ^^Ten minutes past 
seven, young man,” he said, ^^isn^t seven o^clock.” 

Young Bealby made no articulate answer. 

^^Just stand there for a minute,” said Mr. 
Mergleson, ^^and when I^m at libbuty 1^11 run 
through your duties.” And almost ostenta- 
tiously he gave himself up to the enjoyment of 
his cup of tea. 

Three other gentlemen in deshabille sat at 
table with Mr. Mergleson. They regarded young 
Bealby with attention, and the youngest, a red- 
haired, barefaced youth in shirt-sleeves and a 
green apron was moved to a grimace that was 
clearly designed to echo the scowl on young 
Bealby’s features. 

The fury that had been subdued by a momen- 
tary awe of Mr. Mergleson revived and gathered 
force. Young Bealby’s face became scarlet, his 
eyes filled with tears and his mind with the need 
for movement. After all, — he wouldnT stand it. 
He turned round abruptly and made for the door. 

Wherein earth you going to?” cried Mr. 
Mergleson. 

^^He’s shy!” cried the second footman. 

Steady on!” cried the first footman and had 
him by the shoulder in the doorway. 


8 


BEALBY 


^‘Lemme go!^^ howled the new recruit, strug- 
gling. won’t be a blooming servant. I won’t.” 

‘^Here!” cried Mr. Mergleson, gesticulating 
with his teaspoon, bring ’im to the end of the 
table there. What’s this about a blooming 
servant?” 

Bealby, suddenly blubbering, was replaced at 
the end of the table. 

^^May I ask what’s this about a blooming ser- 
vant?” asked Mr. Mergleson. 

Sniff and silence. 

^^Did I understand you to say that you ain’t 
going to be a blooming servant, young Bealby?” 

^^Yes,” said young Bealby. 

Thomas,” said Mr. Mergleson, ^^just smack 
’is ’ed. Smack it rather ’ard. ...” 

Things too rapid to relate occurred. '^So 
you’d hitCj would you?” said Thomas. . . . 

^^Ah!” said Mr. Mergleson. ^^Got ’im ! That 
one!” . . . 

^^Just smack ’is ’ed once more,” said Mr. 
Mergleson. . . . 

^^And now you just stand there, young man, 
until I’m at libbuty to attend to you further,” 
said Mr. Mergleson, and finished his tea slowly 
and eloquently. . . . 

The second footman rubbed his shin thought- 
fully. 

'^If I got to smack ’is ’ed much,” he said, ^^’e’d 
better change into his slippers.” 

'^Take him to ’is room,” said Mr. Mergleson 
getting up. '^See ’e washes the grief and grubbi- 
ness off ’is face in the handwash at the end of 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 9 


the passage and make him put on his slippers. 
Then show hm ’ow to lay the table in the steward's 
room.’’ 

§4 

The duties to which Bealby was introduced 
struck him as perplexingly various, undesirably 
numerous, uninteresting and difficult to remember^ 
and also he did not try to remember them very 
well because he wanted to do them as badly as 
possible and he thought that forgetting would be 
a good way of starting at that. He was beginning 
at the bottom of the ladder ; to him it fell to wait 
on the upper servants, and the green baize door 
at the top of the service staircase was the limit 
of his range. His room was a small wedge-shaped 
apartment under some steps leading to the ser- 
vants’ hall, lit by a window that did not open and 
that gave upon the underground passage. He 
received his instructions in a state of crumpled 
mutinousness, but for a day his desire to be re- 
markably impossible was more than counter- 
balanced by his respect for the large able hands of 
the four man servants, his seniors, and by a dis- 
inclination to be returned too promptly to the 
gardens. Then in a tentative manner he broke 
two plates and got his head smacked by Mr. 
Mergleson himself. Mr. Mergleson gave a stac- 
cato slap quite as powerful as Thomas’s but other- 
wise different. The hand of Mr. Mergleson was 
large and fat and he got his effects by dash, 
Thomas’s was horny and lingered. After that 
young Bealby put salt in the teapot in which the 


10 


BEALBY 


housekeeper made tea. But that he observed she 
washed out with hot water before she put in the 
tea. It was clear that he had wa^ed his salt, 
which ought to have gone into the kettle. 

Next time, — the kettle. 

Beyond telling him his duties almost excessively 
nobody conversed with young Bealby during the 
long hours of his first day in service. At midday 
dinner in the servants^ hall, he made one of the 
kitchen-maids giggle by pulling faces intended 
to be delicately suggestive of Mr. Mergleson, but 
that was his nearest approach to disinterested 
human intercourse. 

When the hour for retirement came, — Get 
out of it. Go to bed, you dirty little Kicker, 
said Thomas. “WeVe had about enough of you 
for one day — young Bealby sat for a long time 
on the edge of his bed weighing the possibilities 
of arson and poison. He wished he had some 
poison. Some sort of poison with a medieval 
manner, poison that hurts before it kills. Also 
he produced a small penny pocket-book with a 
glazed black cover and blue edges. He headed 
one page of this Mergleson and entered be- 
neath it three black crosses. Then he opened an 
account to Thomas, who was manifestly destined 
to be his principal creditor. Bealby was not a 
forgiving boy. At the village school they had 
been too busy making him a good Churchman to 
attend to things like that. There were a lot of 
crosses for Thomas. 

And while Bealby made these sinister memo- 
randa downstairs Lady Laxton — for Laxton 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 11 


had bought a baronetcy for twenty thousand down 
to the party funds and a tip to the whip over the 
Peptonized Milk flotation — Lady Laxton, a 
couple of floors above Bealby^s ruffled head mused 
over her approaching week-end party. It was an 
important week-end party. The Lord Chancellor 
of England was coming. Never before had she 
had so much as a member of the Cabinet at Shonts. 
He was coming, and do what she would she could 
not help but connect it with her very strong desire 
to see the master of Shonts in the clear scarlet of 
a Deputy Lieutenant. Peter would look so well 
in that. The Lord Chancellor was coming, and 
to meet him and to circle about him there were 
Lord John Woodenhouse and Slinker Bond, 
there were the Countess of Barracks and Mrs. 
Bampound Pilby, the novelist, with her husband 
Rampound Pilby, there was Professor Timbre, 
the philosopher, and there were four smaller 
(though quite good) people who would run about 
very satisfactorily among the others. (At least 
she thought they would run about very satis- 
factorily amongst the others, not imagining any 
evil of her cousin Captain Douglas.) 

All this good company in Shonts filled Lady 
Laxton with a pleasant realization of progressive 
successes but at the same time one must confess 
that she felt a certain diffidence. In her heart of 
hearts she knew she had not made this party. 
It had happened to her. How it might go on 
happening to her, she did not know, it was beyond 
her control. She hoped very earnestly that every- 
thing would pass off well. 


12 


BEALBY 


The Lord Chancellor was as big a guest as any 
she had had. One must grow as one grows, but 
still, — being easy and friendly with him would 
be, she knew, a tremendous effort. Rather 
like being easy and friendly with an elephant. 
She was not good at conversation. The task of 
interesting people taxed her and puzzled her. . . . 

It was Slinker Bond, the whip, who had arranged 
the whole business — after, it must be confessed, 
a hint from Sir Peter. Laxton had complained 
that the government were neglecting this part of 
the country. ‘^They ought to show up more than 
they do in the county,” said Sir Peter, and added 
almost carelessly, “I could easily put anybody up 
at Shonts.” There were to be two select dinner 
parties and a large but still select Sunday lunch 
to let in the countryside to the spectacle of 
the Laxtons taking their (new) proper place at 
Shonts. . . . 

It was not only the sense of her own deficiencies 
that troubled Lady Laxton ; there were also her 
husband’s excesses. He had — it was no use dis- 
guising it — rather too much the manner of an 
employer. He had a way of getting, how could 
one put it? — confident at dinner and Mergleson 
seemed to delight in filling up his glass. Then he 
would contradict a good deal. . . . She felt 
that Lord Chancellors however are the sort of men 
one doesn’t contradict. . . . 

Then the Lord Chancellor was said to be in- 
terested in philosophy — a difficult subject. She 
had got Timbre to talk to him upon that. Timbre 
was a professor of philosophy at Oxford, so that 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 13 


was sure to be all right. But she wished she knew 
one or two good safe things to say in philosophy 
herself. She had long felt the need of a secretary, 
and now she felt it more than ever. If she had a 
secretary, she could just tell him what it was she 
wanted to talk about and he could get her one or 
two of the right books and mark the best passages 
and she could learn it all up. 

She feared — it was a worrying fear — that 
Laxton would say right out and very early in the 
week-end that he didn^t believe in philosophy. 
He had a way of saying he “didn^t believe in’’ 
large things like that, — art, philanthropy, novels, 
and so on. Sometimes he said, don^t believe 
in all this^’ — art or whatever it was. She had 
watched people^s faces when he had said it and 
she had come to the conclusion that saying you 
don’t believe in things isn’t the sort of thing people 
say nowadays. It was wrong, somehow. But 
she did not want to tell Laxton directly that it was 
wrong. He would remember if she did, but he had 
a way of taking such things rather badly at the 
time. . . . She hated him to take things badly. 

^Hf one could invent some little hint,” she 
whispered to herself. 

She had often wished she was better at hints. 

She was, you see, a gentlewoman, modest, 
kindly. Her people were quite good people. 
Poor, of course. But she was not clever, she was 
anything but clever. And the wives of these 
captains of industry need to be very clever indeed 
if they are to escape a magnificent social isolation. 
They get the titles and the big places and all that 


14 


BEALBY 


sort of thing ; people don^t at all intend to isolate 
them, but there is nevertheless an inadvertent 
avoidance. . . . 

Even as she uttered these words, one 

could invent some little hint,’^ Bealby down there 
less than forty feet away through the sohd floor 
below her feet and a little to the right was wetting 
his stump of pencil as wet as he could in order to 
ensure a sufficiently emphatic fourteenth cross on 
the score sheet of the doomed Thomas. Most of 
the other thirteen marks were done with such 
hard breathing emphasis that the print of them 
went more than halfway through that little blue- 
edged book. 

§5 

The arrival of the week-end guests impressed 
Bealby at first merely as a blessed influence that 
withdrew the four men-servants into that unknown 
world on the other side of the green baize door, 
but then he learnt that it also involved the appear- 
ance of five new persons, two valets and three 
maids, for whom places had to be laid in the 
steward’s room. Otherwise Lady Laxton’s social 
arrangements had no more influence upon the 
mind of Bealby than the private affairs of the 
Emperor of China. There was something going 
on up there, beyond even his curiosity. All he 
heard of it was a distant coming and going of 
vehicles and some slight talk to which he was 
inattentive while the coachman and grooms were 
having a drink in the pantry — until these maids 
and valets appeared. They seemed to him to 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 15 


appear suddenly out of nothing, like slugs after 
rain, black and rather shiny, sitting about in- 
actively and quietly consuming small matters. 
He disliked them, and they regarded him without 
affection or respoct. 

Who cared? He indicated his feeling towards 
them as soon as he was out of the steward’s room 
by a gesture of the hand and nose venerable only 
by reason of its antiquity. 

He had things more urgent to think about than 
strange valets and maids. Thomas had laid 
hands on him, jeered at him, inflicted shameful 
indignities on him and he wanted to kill Thomas 
in some frightful manner. (But if possible un- 
obtrusively.) 

If he had been a little Japanese boy, this would 
have been an entirely honourable desire. It 
would have been Bushido and all that sort of 
thing. In the gardener’s stepson however it is — 
undesirable. . . . 

Thomas, on the other hand, having remarked 
the red light of revenge in Bealby’s eye and being 
secretly afraid, felt that his honour was concerned 
in not relaxing his persecutions. He called him 
Kicker” and when he did not answer to that 
name, he called him Snorter,” ^^Bleater,” 
Snooks,” and finally tweaked his ear. Then he 
saw fit to assume that Bealby was deaf and that 
ear-tweaking was the only available method of 
address. This led on to the convention of a sign 
language whereby ideas were communicated to 
Bealby by means of painful but frequently quite 
ingeniously symbolical freedoms with various 


16 


BEALBY 


parts of his person. Also Thomas affected to 
discover uncleanliness in Bealby^s head and suc- 
ceeded after many difficulties in putting it into 
a sinkful of lukewarm water. 

Meanwhile young Bealby devoted such scanty 
time as he could give to reflection to debating 
whether it is better to attack Thomas suddenly 
with a carving knife or throw a lighted lamp. 
The large pantry inkpot of pewter might be effec- 
tive in its way, he thought, but he doubted whether 
in the event of a charge it had sufficient stopping 
power. He was also curiously attracted by a 
long two-pronged toasting-fork that hung at the 
side of the pantry fireplace. It had reach, . . . 

Over all these dark thoughts and ill-concealed 
emotions Mr. Mergleson prevailed, large yet 
speedy, speedy yet exact, parroting orders and 
making plump gestures, performing duties and 
seeing that duties were performed. 

Matters came to a climax late on Saturday 
night at the end of a trying day, just before Mr. 
Mergleson went round to lock up and turn out 
the lights. 

Thomas came into the pantry close behind 
Bealby, who, greatly belated through his own in- 
efficiency, was carrying a tray of glasses from the 
steward's room, applied an ungentle hand to his 
neck, and ruffled up his back hair in a smart and 
painful manner. At the same time Thomas re- 
marked, ^^Burrrrh!^’ 

Bealby stood still for a moment and then put 
down his tray on the table and, making peculiar 
sounds as he did so, resorted very rapidly to the 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 17 


toasting fork. . . . He got a prong into Thomas’s 
chin at the first prod. 

How swift are the changes of the human soul ! 
At the moment of his thrust young Bealby was a 
primordial savage; so soon as he saw this in- 
credible piercing of Thomas’s chin — for all the 
care that Bealby had taken it might just as well 
have been Thomas’s eye — he moved swiftly 
through the ages and became a simple Christian 
child. He abandoned violence and fled. 

The fork hung for a moment from the visage of 
Thomas like a twisted beard of brass, and then 
rattled on the ground. 

Thomas clapped his hand to his chin and 
discovered blood. 

“You little — !” He never found the right 
word (which perhaps is just as well) ; instead he 
started in pursuit of Bealby. 

Bealby — in his sudden horror of his own act — 
and Thomas fled headlong into the passage and 
made straight for the service stairs that went up 
into a higher world. He had little time to think. 
Thomas with a red-smeared chin appeared in 
pursuit. Thomas the avenger. Thomas really 
roused. Bealby shot through the green baize 
door and the pursuing footman pulled up only 
just in time not to follow him. 

Only just in time. He had an instinctive instant 
anxious fear of great dangers. He heard some- 
thing, a sound as though the young of some very 
large animal had squeaked feebly. He had a 
glimpse of something black and white — and 
large. . . . 
c 


18 


BEALBY 


Then something, some glass thing, smashed. 

He steadied the green baize door which was 
wobbling on its brass hinges, controlled his panting 
breath and listened. 

A low rich voice was — ejaculating. It was 
not Bealby’s voice, it was the voice of some sub- 
stantial person being quietly but deeply angry. 
They were the ejaculations restrained in tone but 
not in quality of a ripe and well-stored mind, — 
no boy^s thin stuff. 

Then very softly Thomas pushed open the 
door — just widely enough to see and as instantly 
let it fall back into place. 

Very gently and yet with an alert rapidity he 
turned about and stole down the service stairs. 

His superior officer appeared in the passage 
below. 

^^Mr. Mergleson,’’ he cried, say — Mr. 
Mergleson.^’ 

“What^s up?” said Mr. Mergleson. 

^^He^s gone!” 

^^Who?” 

^^Bealby.” 

Home ? ” This almost hopefully. 

^^No.” 

^mere?” 

^^Up there ! I think he ran against somebody.” 

Mr. Mergleson scrutinized his subordinate's face 
for a second. Then he listened intently; both 
men listened intently. 

^^Have to fetch him out of that,” said Mr. 
Mergleson, suddenly preparing for brisk activity. 

Thomas bent lower over the banisters. 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 19 


^‘The Lord Chancellor he whispered with 
white lips and a sideways gesture of his headJ 

^^What about said Mergleson, arrested by 

something in the manner of Thomas. 

Thomases whisper became so fine that Mr. 
Mergleson drew nearer to catch it and put up a 
hand to his ear. Thomas repeated the last 
remark. ^^He^s just through there — on the land- 
ing — cursing and swearing — ^orrible things — 
more like a mad turkey than a human being. 

Whereas Bealby?^’ 

^^He must almost ’ave run into ’im/’ said 
Thomas after consideration. 

'^But now — where is he?” 

Thomas pantomimed infinite perplexity. 

Mr. Mergleson reflected and decided upon his 
line. He came up the service staircase, lifted his 
chin and with an air of meek officiousness went 
through the green door. There was no one now 
on the landing, there was nothing remarkable 
on the landing except a broken tumbler, but half- 
way up the grand staircase stood the Lord Chan- 
cellor. Under one arm the great jurist carried a 
soda water syphon and he grasped a decanter of 
whisky in his hand. He turned sharply at the 
sound of the green baize door and bent upon Mr. 
Mergleson the most terrible eyebrows that ever, 
surely ! adorned a legal visage. He was very red 
in the face and savage-looking. 

'^Was it you,^^ he said with a threatening ges- 
ture of the decanter, and his voice betrayed a 
noble indignation, ^^Was it you who slapped me 
behind?” 


20 


BEALBY 


Slapped you behind, me lord?^^ 

Slapped me behind. Don^t I speak — 
plainly 

— such a libbuty, me lord 
“Idiot! I ask you a plain question — 

With almost inconceivable alacrity Mr. Mergle- 
son rushed up three steps, leapt forward and 
caught the syphon as it slipped from his lord- 
ship ^s arm. 

He caught it, but at a price. He overset and, 
clasping it in his hands, struck his lordship first 
with the syphon on the left shin and then butted 
him with a face that was still earnestly respectful 
in the knees. His lordship ^s legs were driven 
sideways, so that they were no longer beneath his 
centre of gravity. With a monosyllabic remark 
of a topographical nature his lordship collapsed 
upon Mr. Mergleson. The decanter flew out of 
his grasp and smashed presently with emphasis 
upon the landing below. The syphon, escaping 
from the wreckage of Mr. Mergleson and drawn no 
doubt by a natural affinity, rolled noisily from 
step to step in pursuit of the decanter. . . . 

It was a curious little procession that hurried 
down the great staircase of Shonts that night. 
First the whisky like a winged harbinger with the 
pedestrian syphon in pursuit. Then the great 
lawyer gripping the great butler by the tails of 
his coat and punching furiously. Then Mr. 
Mergleson trying wildly to be respectful — even 
in disaster. First the Lord Chancellor dived over 
Mr. Mergleson, grappling as he passed, then Mr. 
Mergleson, attempting explanations, was pulled 


YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 21 


backwards over the Lord Chancellor ; then again 
the Lord Chancellor was for a giddy but vindictive 
moment uppermost ; a second rotation and they 
reached the landing. 

Bang ! There was a deafening report — 


CHAPTER II 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 

§1 

The week-end visit is a form of entertainment 
peculiar to Great Britain. It is a thing that could 
have been possible only in a land essentially aris- 
tocratic and mellow, in which even the observance 
of the sabbath has become mellow. At every 
London terminus on a Saturday afternoon the 
outgoing trains have an unusually large proportion 
of first class carriages, and a peculiar abundance 
of rich-looking dressing-bags provoke the covetous 
eye. A discreet activity of valets and maids 
mingles with the stimulated alertness of the 
porters. One marks celebrities in gay raiment. 
There is an indefinable air of distinction upon 
platform and bookstall. Sometimes there are 
carriages reserved for especially privileged parties. 
There are greetings. 

'^And so you are coming too 

^^No, this time it is Shonts.'^ 

The place where they found the Rubens. Who 
has it now?’’ . . . 

Through this cheerfully prosperous throng 
went the Lord Chancellor with his high nose, 
those eyebrows of his which he seemed to be able 
22 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


23 


to furl or unfurl at will and his expression of 
tranquil self-sufficiency. He was going to Shonts 
for his party and not for his pleasure, but there 
was no reason why that should appear upon his 
face. He went along preoccupied, pretending to 
see nobody, leaving to others the disadvantage of 
the greeting. In his right hand he carried a 
small important bag of leather. Under his left 
arm he bore a philosophical work by Doctor 
MacTaggart, three illustrated papers, the Fort- 
nightly Review^ the day’s TimeSy the Hihhert 
Journal, Punch and two blue bool^. His Lord- 
ship never quite knew the limits set to what he 
could carry under his arm. His man, Candler, 
followed therefore at a suitable distance with 
several papers that had already been dropped, 
alert to retrieve any further losses. 

At the large bookstall they passed close by Mrs. 
Rampound Pilby who, according to her custom, 
was feigning to be a member of the general public 
and was asking the clerk about her last book. 
The Lord Chancellor saw Rampound Pilby hover- 
ing at hand and deftly failed to catch his eye. He 
loathed the Rampound Pilbys. He speculated 
for a moment what sort of people could possibly 
stand Mrs. Pilby’s vast pretensions — even from 
Saturday to Monday. One dinner party on her 
right hand had glutted him for lifa He chose a 
corner seat, took possession of both it and the 
seat opposite it in order to have somewhere to 
put his feet, left Candler to watch over and pack in 
his hand luggage and went high up the platform, 
remaining there with his back to the world — 


24 


BEALBY 


rather like a bigger more aquiline Napoleon — in 
order to evade the great novelist. 

In this he was completely successful. 

He returned however to find Candler on the 
verge of a personal conflict with a very fair young 
man in grey. He was so fair as to be almost an 
albino, except that his eyes were quick and brown ; 
he was blushing the brightest pink and speaking 
very quickly. 

These two places,’’ said Candler, breathless 
with the badness of his case, ^‘are engaged.” 

^^Oh Ye~very well,” said the very fair young man 
with his eyebrows and moustache looking very 
pale by contrast, ^^have it so. But do permit me 
to occupy the middle seat of the carriage. With 
a residuary interest in the semi-gentleman’s place.” 

“You little know, young man, whom you are 
calling a semi-gentleman,” said Candler, whose 
speciality was grammar. 

“Here he is !” said the young gentleman. 

“Which place will you have, my Lord?” 
asked Candler, abandoning his case altogether. 

“Facing,” said the Lord Chancellor slowly un- 
furling the eyebrows and scowling at the young 
man in grey. 

“Then I’ll have the other,” said the very fair 
young man talking very glibly. He spoke with 
a quick low voice, like one who forces himself 
to keep going. “You see,” he said, addressing 
the great jurist with the extreme familiarity of 
the courageously nervous, “I’ve gone into this 
sort of thing before. First, mind you, I have a far 
look for a vacant corner. I’m not the sort to spoil 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


25 


sport. But if there isn’t a vacant comer I look 
for traces of a semi-gentleman. A semi-gentleman 
is one who has a soft cap and not an umbrella — 
his friend in the opposite seat has the umbrella — 
or he has an umbrella and not a soft cap, or a water- 
proof and not a bag, or a bag and not a waterproof. 
And a half interest in a rug. That’s what I call 
a semi-gentleman. You see the idea. Sort of 
divided beggar. Nothing in any way offensive.” 

^^Sir,” said the Lord Chancellor, interrupting 
in a voice of concentrated passion, don’t care 
a rap what you call a semi-gentleman. Will 
you get out of my way?” 

Just as you please,” said the very fair young 
gentleman, and going a few paces from the carriage 
door he whistled for the boy with the papers. 
He was bearing up bravely. 

^^Pink said the very fair young gentle- 

man almost breathlessly. Black and White. 
What’s all these others? Athenceumf Sporting 
and Dramatic ? Right 0. And — Eh ! What ? 
Do I look the sort that buys a Spectator? You 
don’t know ! My dear boy, where’s your savoir 
faire?^^ 

§2 

The Lord Chancellor was a philosopher and not 
easily perturbed. His severe manner was con- 
sciously assumed and never much more than skin- 
deep. He had already furled his eyebrows and 
dismissed his vis-a-vis from his mind before the 
train started. He turned over the Hihbert J ournal, 
and read in it with a large tolerance. 


26 


BEALBY 


Dimly on the outskirts of his consciousness 
the very fair young man hovered; as a trifling 
annoyance, as something pink and hot rustling 
a sheet of a discordant shade of pink, as something 
that got in the way of his legs and whistled softly 
some trivial cheerful air, just to show how little it 
cared. Presently, very soon, this vague trouble 
would pass out of his consciousness altogether. . . . 

The Lord Chancellor was no mere amateur of 
philosophy. His activities in that direction were 
a part of his public reputation. He lectured on 
religion and aesthetics. He was a fluent Hegelian. 
He spent his holidays, it was understood, in the 
Absolute — at any rate in Germany. He would 
sometimes break into philosophy at dinner tables 
and particularly over the desert and be more lumi- 
nously incomprehensible while still apparently 
sober, than almost anyone. An article in the 
Hibbert caught and held his attention. It at- 
tempted to define a new and doubtful variety of 
Infinity. You know, of course, that there are 
many sorts and species of Infinity, and that the 
Absolute is just the king among Infinities as the 
lion is king among the Beasts. . . . 

say,^’ said a voice coming out of the world of 
Relativity and coughing the cough of those who 
break a silence, '^you arenT going to Shonts, are 
you?^’ 

The Lord Chancellor returned slowly to earth. 

“Just seen your label,’' said the very fair young 
man. “You see, — Fm going to Shonts.” 

The Lord Chancellor remained outwardly serene. 
He reflected for a moment. And then he fell into 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


27 


that snare which is more fatal to great lawyers 
and judges perhaps than to any other class of 
men, the snare of the crushing repartee. One 
had come into his head now, — a beauty. 

^^Then we shall meet there,’' he said in his 
suavest manner. 

^^Well — rather.” 

''It would be a great pity,” said the Lord Chan- 
cellor with an effective blandness, using a kind 
of wry smile that he employed to make things 
humorous, "it would be a great pity, don’t you 
think, to anticipate that pleasure.” 

And having smiled the retort well home with 
his head a little on one side, he resumed with 
large leisurely movements the reading of his 
Hibhert Journal, 

"Got me there,” said the very fair young man 
belatedly, looking boiled to a turn, and after a 
period of restlessness settled down to an impatient 
perusal of Black and White. 

"There’s a whole blessed week-end of course,” 
the young man remarked presently without looking 
up from his paper and apparently pursuing some 
obscure meditations. . . . 

A vague uneasiness crept into the Lord Chan- 
cellor’s mind as he continued to appear to peruse. 
Out of what train of thought could such a remark 
arise? His weakness for crushing retort had a 
little betrayed him. ... 

It was, however, only when he found himself 
upon the platform of Chelsome, which as everyone 
knows is the station for Shonts, and discovered 
Mr. and Mrs. Rampound Pilby upon the platform, 


28 


BEALBY 


looking extraordinarily like a national monument 
and its custodian, that the Lord Chancellor, 
began to realize that he was in the grip of fate, 
and that the service he was doing his party by 
week-ending with the Laxtons was likely to be not 
simply joyless but disagreeable. 

Well, anyhow, he had MacTaggart, and he could 
always work in his own room. . . . 

§3 

By the end of dinner the Lord Chancellor was 
almost at the end of his large but clumsy endur- 
ance ; he kept his eyebrows furled only by the most 
strenuous relaxation of his muscles, and within 
he was a sea of silent blasphemies. All sorts of 
little things had accumulated. . . . 

He exercised an unusual temperance with the 
port and old brandy his host pressed upon him, 
feeling that he dared not relax lest his rage had its 
way with him. The cigars were quite intelligent 
at any rate, and he smoked and listened with a 
faintly perceptible disdain to the conversation of 
the other men. At any rate Mrs. Rampound 
Pilby was out of the room. The talk had arisen 
out of a duologue that had preceded the departure 
of the ladies, a duologue of Timbre’s, about ap- 
paritions and the reality of the future life. Sir 
Peter Laxton, released from the eyes of his wife, 
was at liberty to say he did not believe in all this 
stuff ; it was just thought transference and fancy 
and all that sort of thing. His declaration did 
not arrest the flow of feeble instances and experi- 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


29 


ences into which such talk invariably degenerates. 
His Lordship remained carelessly attentive, his 
eyebrows unfurled but drooping, his cigar upward 
at an acute angle; he contributed no anecdotes, 
content now and then to express himself com- 
pactly by some brief sentence of pure Hegelian — 
much as a Mahometan might spit. 

'^Why! come to that, they say Shonts is 
haunted,’’ said Sir Peter. “I suppose we could 
have a ghost here in no time if I chose to take it on. 
Hare place for a ghost, too.” 

The very fair young man of the train had got 
a name now and was Captain Douglas. When 
he was not blushing too brightly he was rather 
good looking. He was a distant cousin of Lady 
Laxton’s. He impressed the Lord Chancellor as 
unabashed. He engaged people in conversation 
with a cheerful familiarity that excluded only 
the Lord Chancellor, and even at the Lord Chan- 
cellor he looked ever and again. He pricked up 
his ears at the mention of ghosts, and afterwards 
when the Lord Chancellor came to think things 
over, it seemed to him that he had caught a 
curious glance of the Captain’s bright little brown 
eye. 

What sort of ghost. Sir Peter ? Chains ? Eh ? 
No?” 

'^Nothing of that sort, it seems. I don’t know 
much about it, I wasn’t sufficiently interested. 
No, sort of spook that bangs about and does you 
a mischief. What’s its name? Plundergeist ?” 

Poltergeist,” the Lord Chancellor supplied 
carelessly in the pause. 


30 


BEALBY 


'^Runs its hand over your hair in the dark. 
Taps your shoulder. All nonsense. But we 
donT tell the servants. Sort of thing I donT be- 
lieve in. Easily explained, — what with panelling 
and secret passages and priests’ holes and all that.” 

Priests’ holes!” Douglas was excited. 

“Where they hid. Perfect rabbit warren. 
There’s one going out from the drawing-room 
alcove. Quite a good room in its way. But you 
know,” — a note of wrath crept into Sir Peter’s 
voice, — “they didn’t treat me fairly about 
these priests’ holes. I ought to have had a sketch 
and a plan of these priests’ holes. When a chap 
is given possession of a place, he ought to be given 
possession. Well ! I don’t know where half of 
them are myself. That’s not possession. Else 
we might refurnish them and do them up a bit. 
I guess they’re pretty musty.” 

Captain Douglas spoke with his eye on the Lord 
Chancellor. “Sure there isn’t a murdered priest 
in the place. Sir Peter?” he asked. 

“Nothing of the sort,” said Sir Peter. “I don’t 
believe in these priests’ holes. Half of ’em 
never had priests in ’em. It’s all pretty tidy 
rot I expect — come to the bottom of it. ...” 

The conversation did not get away from ghosts 
and secret passages until the men went to the 
drawing-room. If it seemed likely to do so Cap- 
tain Douglas pulled it back. He seemed to delight 
in these silly particulars ; the sillier they were 
the more he was delighted. 

The Lord Chancellor was a little preoccupied 
by one of those irrational suspicions that will 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


31 


sometimes afflict the most intelligent of men. 
Why did Douglas want to know all the particulars 
about the Shouts ghosts? Why every now and 
then did he glance with that odd expression at 
one^s face, — a glance half appealing and half 
amused. Amused ! It was a strange fancy, 
but the Lord Chancellor could almost have sworn 
that the young man was laughing at him. At 
dinner he had had that feeling one has at times 
of being talked about ; he had glanced along the 
table to discover the Captain and a rather plain 
woman, that idiot Timbrels wife she probably 
was, with their heads together looking up at him 
quite definitely and both manifestly pleased by 
something Douglas was telling her. . . . 

What was it Douglas had said in the train? 
Something like a threat. But the exact words 
had slipped the Lord Chancellor’s memory. . . . 

The Lord Chancellor’s preoccupation was just 
sufficient to make him a little unwary. He 
drifted into grappling distance of Mrs. Rampound 
Pilby. Her voice caught him like a lasso and 
drew him in. 

^^Well, and how is Lord Moggeridge now?” she 
asked. 

What on earth is one to si»y to such an im- 
pertinence ? 

She was always like that. She spoke to a man 
of the calibre of Lord Bacon as though she was 
speaking to a schoolboy home for the holidays. 
She had an invincible air of knowing all through 
everybody. It gave rather confidence to her work 
than charm to her manner. 


32 


BEALBY 


you still go on with your philosophy?^’ 
she said. 

^^No/’ shouted the Lord Chancellor, losing all 
self-control for the moment and waving his eye- 
brows about madly, ^^no, I go with it.” 

^^For your vacations? Ah, Lord Moggeridge, 
how I envy you great lawyers your long vacations. 
I — never get a vacation. Always we poor 
authors are pursued by our creations, sometimes 
it’s typescript, sometimes it’s proofs. Not that 
I really complain of proofs. I confess to a weak- 
ness for proofs. Sometimes, alas ! it’s criticism. 
Such undiscerning criticism! ...” 

The Lord Chancellor began to think very 
swiftly of some tremendous lie that would enable 
him to escape at once without incivility from 
Lady Laxton’s drawing-room. Then he perceived 
that Mrs. Rampound Pilby was asking him ; 
'^Is that the Captain Douglas, or his brother, 
who’s in love with the actress woman?” 

The Lord Chancellor made no answer. What 
he thought was Great Silly Idiot I How should 
/ know ? ” 

think it must be the one, — the one who had 
to leave Portsmouth in disgrace because of the rag- 
ging scandal. He did nothing there, they say, but 
organize practical jokes. Some of them were quite 
subtle practical jokes. He’s a cousin of our host- 
ess ; that perhaps accounts for his presence. ...” 

The Lord Chancellor’s comment betrayed the 
drift of his thoughts. ^^He’d better not try that 
sort of thing on here,” he said. abominate — 
clowning.” 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


33 


Drawing-room did not last very long. Even 
Lady Laxton could not miss the manifest gloom of 
her principal guest, and after the good-nights 
and barley water and lemonade on the great 
landing Sir Peter led Lord Moggeridge by the 
arm — he hated being led by the arm — into the 
small but still spacious apartment that was called 
the study. The Lord Chancellor was now very 
thirsty ; he was not used to abstinence of any sort ; 
but Sir Peter^s way of suggesting a drink roused 
such a fury of resentment in him that he refused 
tersely and conclusively. There was nobody else 
in the study but Captain Douglas, who seemed to 
hesitate upon the verge of some familiar address, 
and Lord Woodenhouse, who was thirsty, too, 
and held a vast tumbler of whisky and soda, 
with a tinkle of ice in it, on his knee in a way 
annoying to a parched man. The Lord Chan- 
cello|r helped himself to a cigar and assumed the 
middle of the fireplace with an air of contentment, 
but he could feel the self-control running out of 
the heels of his boots. 

Sir Peter, after a quite unsuccessful invasion 
of his own hearthrug — the Lord Chancellor 
stood like a rock — secured the big armchair, 
stuck his feet out towards his distinguished guest 
and resumed a talk that he had been holding with 
Lord Woodenhouse about firearms. Mergleson 
had as usual been too attentive to his master^s 
glass, and the fine edge was off Sir Peter^s defer- 
ence. always have carried firearms,’^ he said, 
^^and I always shall. Used properly they are a 
great protection. Even in the country how are 


34 


BEALBY 


you to know who you^re going to run up against 
— anywhen?’^ 

'^But you might shoot and hit something/' 
said Douglas. 

Properly used, I said — properly used. Whip- 
ping out a revolver and shooting at a man, that's 
not properly used. Almost as bad as pointing 
it at him — which is pretty certain to make him 
fly straight at you. If he's got an ounce of 
pluck. But I said properly used and I mean 
properly used." 

The Lord Chancellor tried to think about that 
article on Infinities, while appearing to listen to 
this fool's talk. He despised revolvers. Armed 
with such eyebrows as his it was natural for him 
to despise revolvers. 

“Now, I've got some nice little barkers up- 
stairs," said Sir Peter. “I'd almost welcome 
a burglar, just to try them." 

“If you shoot a burglar," said Lord Wooden- 
house abruptly, with a gust of that ill-temper 
that was frequent at Shonts towards bedtime, 
“when he's not attacking you, it's murder." 

Sir Peter held up an offensively pacifying hand. 
“I know thatj^ he said; “you needn't tell me 
thatJ^ 

He raised his voice a little to increase his 
already excessive accentuations. “/ said properly 
used." 

A yawn took the Lord Chancellor unawares 
and he caught it dexterously with his hand. 
Then he saw Douglas hastily pull at his little 
blond moustache to conceal a smile, — grinning 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


35 


ape ! What was there to smile at ? The man 
had been smiling all the evening. 

Up to something ? 

''Now let me tell you” said Sir Peter, "let me 
tell you the proper way to use a revolver. You 
whip it out and instantly let fly at the ground. 
You should never let anyone see a revolver ever 
before they hear it — see? You let fly at the 
ground first off, and the concussion stuns them. 
It doesnT stun you. You expect it, they donT. 
See ? There you are — five shots left, master of 
the situation.’’ 

•* "I think. Sir Peter, I’ll bid you good-night,” 
said the Lord Chancellor, allowing his eye to rest 
for one covetous moment on the decanter, and 
struggling with the devil of pride. 

Sir Peter made a gesture of extreme friendliness 
from his chair, expressive of the Lord Chancellor’s 
freedom to do whatever he pleased at Shonts. 
"I may perhaps tell you a little story that hap- 
pened once in Morocco.” 

"My eyes won’t keep open any longer,” said 
Captain Douglas suddenly, with a whirl of his 
knuckles into his sockets, and stood up. 

Lord Woodenhouse stood up too. 

"You see,” said Sir Peter, standing also but 
sticking to his subject and his hearer. "This 
was when I was younger than I am now, you 
must understand, and I wasn’t married. Just 
mooching about a bit, between business and 
pleasure. Under such circumstances one goes 
into parts of a foreign town where one wouldn’t 
go if one was older and wiser. . . 


36 


BEALBY 


Captain Douglas left Sir Peter and Wooden- 
house to it. 

He emerged on the landing and selected one 
of the lighted candlesticks upon the table. 
^^Lord!^^ he whispered. He grimaced in solil- 
oquy and then perceived the Lord Chancellor 
regarding him with suspicion and disfavour from 
the ascending staircase. He attempted ease. 
For the first time since the train incident he 
addressed Lord Moggeridge. 

“I gather, my lord, — don^t believe in ghosts?^' 
he said. 

^‘No, Sir,’’ said the Lord Chancellor, don’t.” 

^^They won’t trouble me to-night.” 

“They won’t trouble any of us.” 

“Fine old house anyhow,” said Captain Doug- 
las. 

The Lord Chancellor disdained to reply. He 
went on his way upstairs. 

§4 

When the Lord Chancellor sat down before 
the thoughtful fire in the fine old panelled room 
assigned to him he perceived that he was too 
disturbed to sleep. This was going to be an in- 
fernal week-end. The worst week-end he had 
ever had. Mrs. Hampound Pilby maddened him ; 
Timbre, who was a Pragmatist — which stands 
in the same relation to a Hegelian that a small 
dog does to a large cat — exasperated him ; he 
loathed Laxton, detested Hampound Pilby and 
feared — as far as he was capable of fearing any- 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


37 


thing — Captain Douglas. There was no refuge, 
no soul in the house to whom he could turn for 
consolation and protection from these others. 
Slinker Bond could talk only of the affairs of the 
party, and the Lord Chancellor, being Lord Chan- 
cellor, had long since lost any interest in the 
affairs of the party ; Woodenhouse could talk of 
nothing. The women were astonishingly negli- 
gible. There were practically no pretty women. 
There ought always to be pretty young women 
for a Lord Chancellor, pretty young women who 
can at least seem to listen. . . . 

And he was atrociously thirsty. 

His room was supplied only with water, — 
stuff you use to clean your teeth — and nothing 
else. . . . 

No good thinking about it. . . . 

He decided that the best thing he could do to 
compose himself before turning in would be to 
sit down at the writing-table and write a few 
sheets of Hegelian — about that Infinity article 
in the Hibbert. There is indeed no better con- 
solation for a troubled mind than the Hegelian 
exercises ; they lift it above — everything. He 
took off his coat and sat down to this beautiful 
amusement, but he had scarcely written a page 
before his thirst became a torment. He kept 
thinking of that great tumbler Woodenhouse had 
held, — sparkling, golden, cool — and stimulating. 

What he wanted was a good stiff whisky and a 
cigar, one of Laxton^s cigars, the only good thing 
in his entertainment so far. 

And then Philosophy. 


38 


BEALBY 


Even as a student he had been a worker of the 
Teutonic type, — never abstemious. 

He thought of ringing and demanding these 
comforts, and then it occurred to him that it was 
a little late to ring for things. Why not fetch 
them from the study himself? . . . 

He opened his door and looked out upon the 
great staircase. It was a fine piece of work, 
that staircase. Low, broad, dignified. . . . 

There seemed to be nobody about. The 
lights were still on. He listened for a little while, 
and then put on his coat and went with a soft 
swiftness that was still quite dignified down- 
stairs to the study, the study redolent of Sir 
Peter. 

He made his modest collection. 

Lord Moggeridge came nearer to satisfaction 
as he emerged from the study that night at Shonts 
than at any other moment during this ill-advised 
week-end. In his pocket were four thoroughly 
good cigars. In one hand he held a cut glass 
decanter of whisky. In the other a capacious 
tumbler. Under his arm, with that confidence 
in the unlimited portative power of his arm that 
nothing could shake, he had tucked the syphon. 
His soul rested upon the edge of tranquillity 
like a bird that has escaped the fowler. He was 
already composing his next sentence about that 
new variety of Infinity. . . . 

Then something struck him from behind and 
impelled him forward a couple of paces. It was 
something hairy, something in the nature, he 
thought afterwards, of a worn broom. And also 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


39 


there were two other things softer and a little 
higher on each side. . . . 

Then it was he made that noise like the young 
of some large animal. 

He dropped the glass in a hasty attempt to save 
the syphon. . . . 

'^What in the name of Heaven — he cried, 
and found himself alone. 

Captain Douglas 

The thought leapt to his mind. 

But indeed, it was not Captain Douglas. It 
was Bealby. Bealby in panic flight from Thomas. 
And how was Bealby to know that this large, 
richly laden man was the Lord Chancellor of 
England? Never before had Bealby seen anyone 
in evening dress except a butler, and so he sup- 
posed this was Just some larger, finer kind of 
butler that they kept upstairs. Some larger, 
finer kind of butler blocking the path of escape. 
Bealby had taken in the situation with the ra- 
pidity of a hunted animal. The massive form 
blocked the door to the left. . . . 

In the playground of the village school Bealby 
had been preeminent for his dodging ; he moved 
as quickly as a lizard. His little hands, his head, 
poised with the skill of a practised butter, came 
against that mighty back, and then Bealby had 
dodged into the study. . . . 

But it seemed to Lord Moggeridge, staggering 
over his broken glass and circling about defen- 
sively, that this fearful indignity could come only 
from Captain Douglas. Foolery. . . . Blup, 
blup. . . . Sham Poltergeist. Imbeciles. . . . 


40 


BEALBY 


He said as much, believing that this young man 
and possibly confederates were within hearing; 
he said as much — hotly. He went on to remark 
of an unphilosophical tendency about Captain 
Douglas generally, and about army officers, prac- 
tical joking, Laxton’s hospitalities, Shonts. . , . 
Thomas, you will remember, heard him. . . . 

Nothing came of it. No answer, not a word of 
apology. 

At last in a great dudgeon and with a kind of 
wariness about his back, the Lord Chancellor, 
with things more spoilt for him than ever, went 
on his way upstairs. 

When the green baize door opened behind him, 
he turned like a shot, and a large foolish-faced 
butler appeared. Lord Moggeridge, with a 
sceptre-like motion of the decanter, very quietly 
and firmly asked him a simple question and then, 
then the lunatic must needs leap up three stairs 
and dive suddenly and upsettingly at his legs. 

Lord Moggeridge was paralyzed with amaze- 
ment. His legs were struck from under him. He 
uttered one brief topographical cry. 

(To Sir Peter unfortunately it sounded like 

^^HelpI^O 

For a few seconds the impressions that rushed 
upon Lord Moggeridge were too rapid for adequate 
examination. He had a compelling fancy to kill 
butlers. Things culminated in a pistol shot. 
And then he found himself sitting on the landing 
beside a disgracefully dishevelled manservant, and 
his host was running downstairs to them with a 
revolver in his hand. 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


41 


On occasion Lord Moggeridge could produce a 
tremendous voice. He did so now. For a mo- 
ment he stared panting at Sir Peter, and then 
emphasized by a pointing finger came the voice. 
Never had it been so charged with emotion. 

^^What does this mean, you, Sir?^^ he shouted. 
^^What does this mean?” 

It was exactly what Sir Peter had intended to 
say. 

§5 

Explanations are detestable things. 

And anyhow it isnT right to address your host 
as ^^You, Sir.” 

§6 

Throughout the evening the persuasion had 
grown in Lady Laxton^s mind that all was not 
going well with the Lord Chancellor. It was 
impossible to believe he was enjoying himself. 
But she did not know how to give things a turn 
for the better. Clever women would have known, 
but she was so convinced she was not clever that 
she did not even try. 

Thing after thing had gone wrong. 

How was she to know that there were two 
sorts of philosophy, — quite different? She had 
thought philosophy was philosophy. But it 
seemed that there were these two sorts, if not 
more ; a round large sort that talked about the 
Absolute and was scornfully superior and rather 
irascible, and a jabby-pointed sort that called 
people Tender” or Tough,” and was generally 


42 


BEALBY 


much too familiar. To bring them together was 
just mixing trouble. There ought to be little 
books for hostesses explaining these things. . . . 

Then it was extraordinary that the Lord Chan- 
cellor, who was so tremendously large and clever, 
wouldnT go and talk to Mrs. Rampound Pilby, 
who was also so tremendously large and clever. 
Repeatedly Lady Laxton had tried to get them 
into touch with one another. Until at last the 
Lord Chancellor had said distinctly and deliber- 
ately, when she had suggested his going across to 
the eminent writer, ^^God forbid Her dream 
of a large clever duologue that she could after- 
wards recall with pleasure was altogether shat- 
tered. She thought the Lord Chancellor uncom- 
monly hard to please. These weren’t the only 
people for him. Why couldn’t he chat party 
secrets with Slinker Bond or say things to Lord 
Woodenhouse? You could say anything you 
liked to Lord Woodenhouse. Or talk with Mr. 
Timbre. Mrs. Timbre had given him an excellent 
opening ; she had asked, Wasn’t it a dreadful 
anxiety always to have the Great Seal to mind?” 
He had simply grunted, . . . And then why did 
he keep on looking so dangerously at Captain 
Douglas? . . . 

Perhaps to-morrow things would take a turn 
for the better. . . . 

One can at least be hopeful. Even if one is not 
clever one can be that. . . . 

From such thoughts as these it was that this 
unhappy hostess was roused by a sound of smash- 
ing glass, a rumpus, and a pistol shot. 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


43 


She stood up, she laid her hand on her heart, 
she said and gripped her dressing-table 

for support. . . . 

After a long time and when it seemed that it 
was now nothing more than a hubbub of voices, 
in which her husband’s could be distinguished 
clearly, she crept out very softly upon the upper 
landing. 

She perceived her cousin. Captain Douglas, 
looking extremely fair and frail and untrustworthy 
in a much too gorgeous kimono dressing-gown of 
embroidered Japanese silk. can assure you, 
my lord,” he was saying in a strange high-pitched 
deliberate voice, ^^on-my-word-of-honour- 
as - a - soldier, that I know absolutely nothing 
about it.” 

^^Sure it wasn’t all imagination, my lord?” Sir 
Peter asked with his inevitable infelicity. . . . 

She decided to lean over the balustrading and 
ask very quietly and clearly : 

^‘Lord Moggeridge, please! is anything the 
matter?” 

§6 

All human beings are egotists, but there is no 
egotism to compare with the egotism of the very 
young. 

Bealby was so much the centre of his world 
that he was incapable of any interpretation of 
this shouting and uproar, this smashing of de- 
canters and firing of pistol shots, except in refer- 
ence to himself. He supposed it to be a Hue and 
Cry. He supposed that he was being hunted — 


44 


BEALBY 


hunted by a pack of great butlers hounded on by 
the irreparably injured Thomas. The thought 
of upstairs gentlefolks passed quite out of his 
mind. He snatched up a faked Syrian dagger 
that lay, in the capacity of a paper knife, on the 
study table, concealed himself under the chintz 
valance of a sofa, adjusted its rumpled skirts 
neatly, and awaited the issue of events. 

For a time events did not issue. They re- 
mained talking noisily upon the great staircase. 
Bealby could not hear what was said, but most of 
what was said appeared to be flat contradiction. 

Perchance, whispered Bealby to himself, 
gathering courage, perchance we have eluded 
them. ... A breathing space. , , 

At last a woman’s voice mingled with the 
others and seemed a little to assuage them. . . . 

Then it seemed to Bealby that they were dis- 
persing to beat the house for him. ^^Good- 
night again then,” said someone. 

That puzzled him, but he decided it was a 
blind.” He remained very, very still. 

He heard a clicking in the apartment — the 
blue parlour it was called — between the study 
and the dining-room. Electric light? 

Then some one came into the study. Bealby’s 
eye was as close to the ground as he could get it. 
He was breathless, he moved his head with an 
immense circumspection. The valance was trans- 
lucent but not transparent, below it there was a 
crack of vision, a strip of carpet, the castors of 
chairs. Among these things he perceived feet — 
not ankles, it did not go up to that, but just feet. 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


45 


Large flattish feet. A pair. They stood still, 
and Bealby^s hand lighted on the hilt of his 
dagger. 

The person above the feet seemed to be sur- 
veying the room or reflecting. 

Drunk! . . . Old foofls either drunk or mad ! 
That’s about the truth of it,” said a voice. 

Mergleson ! Angry, but parroty and unmis- 
takable. 

The feet went across to the table and there 
were faint sounds of refreshment, discreetly 
administered. Then a moment of profound still- 
ness. . . . 

^^Ah !” said the voice at last, a voice renewed. 

Then the feet went to the passage door, halted 
in the doorway. There was a double click. The 
lights went out. Bealby was in absolute dark- 
ness. 

Then a distant door closed and silence fol- 
lowed upon the dark. . . . 

Mr. Mergleson descended to a pantry ablaze 
with curiosity. 

^^The Lord Chancellor’s going dotty,” said 
Mr. Mergleson, replying to the inevitable question. 

Thafs what’s up. ”... 

tried to save the blessed s5rphon,” said Mr. 
Mergleson, pursuing his narrative, and ’e sprang 
on me like a leppard. I suppose ’e thought I 
wanted to take it away from ’im. ’E’d broke a 
glass already. ^Ow, — I don’t know. There it 
was, lying on the landing. . . .” 

’Ere’s where ’e bit my ’and,” said Mr. Mergle- 
son. . . . 


46 


BEALBY 


A curious little side-issue occurred to Thomas. 
“Whereas young Kicker all this time?’’ he 
asked. 

“ Lord ! ” said Mr. Mergleson, all them other 
things ; they clean drove ’im out of my ’ed. I 
suppose ’e’s up there, hiding somewhere. . . .” 

He paused. His eye consulted the eye of 
Thomas. 

^^’E’s got be’ind a curtain or something,” said 
Mr. Mergleson. . . . 

Queer where ’e can ’ave got to,” said Mr. 
Mergleson. . . . 

Can’t be bothered about ’im,” said Mr. 
Mergleson. 

expect he’ll sneak down to ’is room when 
things are quiet,” said Thomas, after reflection. 

^^No good going and looking for ’im now,” 
said Mr. Mergleson. “Things upstairs, — they 
got to settle down. . . 

But in the small hours Mr. Mergleson awakened 
and thought of Bealby and wondered whether he 
was in bed. This became so great an uneasiness 
that about the hour of dawn he got up and went 
along the passage to Bealby’s compartment. 
Bealby was not there and his bed had not been 
slept in. 

That sinister sense of gathering misfortunes 
which comes to all of us at times in the small 
hours, was so strong in the mind of Mr. Mergle- 
son that he went on and told Thomas of this 
disconcerting fact. Thomas woke with difficulty 
and rather crossly, but sat up at last, alive to 
the gravity of Mr. Mergleson’s mood. 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


47 


found hiding about upstairs after all 
this upset/^ said Mr. Mergleson, and left the 
rest of the sentence to a sympathetic imagina- 
tion. 

^'Now it’s light,” said Mr. Mergleson after a 
slight pause, think we better just go round 
and ’ave a look for ’im. Both of us.” 

So Thomas clad himself provisionally, and 
the two man-servants went upstairs very softly 
and began a series of furtive sweeping move- 
ments — very much in the spirit of Lord Kitch- 
ener’s historical sweeping movements in the 
Transvaal — through the stately old rooms in 
which Bealby must be lurking. . . . 

§8 

Man is the most restless of animals. There is 
an incessant urgency in his nature. He never 
knows when he is well off. And so it was that 
Bealby’s comparative security under the sofa 
became presently too irksome to be endured. 
He seemed to himself to stay there for ages, 
but as a matter of fact, he stayed there only 
twenty minutes. Then with eyes tempered to 
the darkness he first struck out an alert attentive 
head, then crept out and remained for the space 
of half a minute on all fours surveying the in- 
distinct blacknesses about him. 

Then he knelt up. Then he stood up. Then 
with arms extended and cautious steps he began 
an exploration of the apartment. 

The passion for exploration grows with what 


48 


BEALBY 


it feeds upon. Presently Bealby was feeling 
his way into the blue parlour and then round by 
its shuttered and curtained windows to the dining- 
room. His head was now full of the idea of some 
shelter, more permanent, less pervious to house- 
maids, than that sofa. He knew enough now of 
domestic routines to know that upstairs in the 
early morning was much routed by housemaids. 
He found many perplexing turns and corners, 
and finally got into the dining-room fireplace 
where it was very dark and kicked against some 
fire-irons. That made his heart beat fast for a 
time. Then groping on past it, he found in the 
darkness what few people could have found in 
the day, the stud that released the panel that 
hid the opening of the way that led to the 
priest hole. He felt the thing open, and halted 
perplexed. In that corner there wasn’t a ray 
of light. For a long time he was tr3dng to think 
what this opening could be, and then he con- 
cluded it was some sort of back way from down- 
stairs. . . . Well, anyhow it was all exploring. 
With an extreme gingerliness he got himself 
through the panel. He closed it almost com- 
pletely behind him. 

Careful investigation brought him to the view 
that he was in a narrow passage of brick or stone 
that came in a score of paces to a spiral staircase 
going both up and down. Up this he went, and 
presently breathed cool night air and had a 
glimpse of stars through a narrow slit-like window 
almost blocked by ivy. Then — what was very 
disagreeable — something scampered. 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


49 


When Bealby^s heart recovered he went on 
up again. 

He came to the priest hole, a capacious cell 
six feet square with a bench bed and a little 
table and chair. It had a small door upon the 
stairs that was open and a niche cupboard. Here 
he remained for a time. Then restlessness made 
him explore a cramped passage, he had to crawl 
along it for some yards, that came presently into 
a curious space with wood on one side and stone 
on the other. Then ahead, most blessed thing ! 
he saw light. 

He went blundering toward it and then stopped 
appalled. From the other side of this wooden 
wall to the right of him had come a voice. 

^^Come in said the voice. A rich masculine 
voice that seemed scarcely two yards away. 

Bealby became rigid. Then after a long in- 
terval he moved — as softly as he could. 

The voice soliloquized. 

Bealby listened intently, and then when all 
was still again crept forward two paces more 
towards the gleam. It was a peephole. 

The unseen speaker was walking about. Bealby 
listened, and the sound of his beating heart 
mingled with the pad, pad, of slippered foot- 
steps. Then with a brilliant effort his eye was 
at the chink. All was still again. For a time 
he was perplexed by what he saw, a large pink 
shining dome, against a deep greenish grey back- 
ground. At the base of the dome was a kind of 
interrupted hedge, brown and leafless. . . . 

Then he realized that he was looking at the 


50 


BEALBY 


top of a head and two enormous eyebrows. The 
rest was hidden. . . . 

Nature surprised Bealby into a penetrating 
sniff, 

^^Now/^ said the occupant of the room, and 
suddenly he was standing up — Bealby saw a 
long hairy neck sticking out of a dressing-gown — 
and walking to the side of the room. won^t 
stand it,’^ said the great voice, won^t stand 
it. Ape’s foolery!” 

Then the Lord Chancellor began rapping at 
the panelling about his apartment. 

Hollow! It all sounds hollow.” 

Only after a long interval did he resume his 
writing. . . . 

All night long that rat behind the wainscot 
troubled the Lord Chancellor. Whenever he spoke, 
whenever he moved about, it was still ; whenever 
he composed himself to write it began to rustle 
and blunder. Again and again it sniffed, — an 
annoying kind of sniff. At last the Lord Chan- 
cellor gave up his philosophical relaxation and 
went to bed, turned out the lights and attempted 
sleep, but this only intensified his sense of an un- 
easy, sniffing presence close to him. When the 
light was out it seemed to him that this Thing, 
whatever it was, instantly came into the room 
and set the floor creaking and snapping. A 
Thing perpetually attempting something and 
perpetually thwarted. . . . 

The Lord Chancellor did not sleep a wink. 
The first feeble infiltration of day found him sit- 
ting up in bed, wearily wrathful. . . . And now 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


51 


surely someone was going along the passage 
outside ! 

A great desire to hurt somebody very much 
seized upon the Lord Chancellor. Perhaps he 
might hurt that dismal farceur upon the landing ! 
No doubt it was Douglas sneaMng back to his 
own room after the night^s efforts. 

The Lord Chancellor slipped on his dressing- 
gown of purple silk. Very softly indeed did he 
open his bedroom door and very warily peep out. 
He heard the soft pad of feet upon the staircase. 

He crept across the broad passage to the beau- 
tiful old balustrading. Down below he saw 
Mergleson — Mergleson again ! — in a shameful 
deshabille — going like a snake, like a slinking 
cat, like an assassin, into the door of the study. 
Rage filled the great man^s soul. Gathering up 
the skirts of his dressing-gown he started in a 
swift yet noiseless pursuit. 

He followed Mergleson through the little par- 
lour and into the dining-room, and then he saw 
it all ! There was a panel open, and Mergleson 
very cautiously going in. Of course ! They had 
got at him through the priest hole. They had 
been playing on his nerves. All night they had 
been doing it — no doubt in relays. The whole 
house was in this conspiracy. 

With his eyebrows spread like the wings of 
a fighting-cock the Lord Chancellor in five vast 
noiseless strides had crossed the intervening 
space and gripped the butler by his collarless 
shirt as he was disappearing. It was like a hawk 
striking a sparrow. Mergleson felt himself 


52 


BEALBY 


clutched, glanced over his shoulder and, seeing 
that fierce familiar face again close to his own, 
pitiless, vindictive, lost all sense of human dignity 
and yelled like a lost soul. . . . 

§9 

Sir Peter Laxton was awakened from an uneasy 
sleep by the opening of the dressing-room door 
that connected his room with his wife^s. 

He sat up astonished and stared at her white 
face, its pallor exaggerated by the cold light of 
dawn. 

^^Peter,’^ she said, ^‘Vm. sure there's something 
more going on." 

Something more going on?" 

'^Something — shouting and swearing." 

'^You don't mean—?" 

She nodded. ^^The Lord Chancellor," she said, 
in an awe-stricken whisper. “He's at it again. 
Downstairs in the dining-room." 

Sir Peter seemed disposed at first to receive this 
quite passively. Then he flashed into extrava- 
gant wrath. “I'm damned/^ he cried, jumping 
violently out of bed, “if I'm going to stand this ! 
Not if he was a hundred Lord Chancellors ! 
He's turning the place into a bally lunatic asylum. 
Once — one might excuse. But to start in again. 
. . . Whafs that?” 

They both stood still listening. Faintly yet 
quite distinctly came the agonized cry of some 
imperfectly educated person, — “'Elp !" 

“Here! Where's my trousers?" cried Sir 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


53 


Peter. ^^He’s murdering Mergleson. There isn^t 
a moment to lose.’’ 

§10 

Until Sir Peter returned Lady Laxton sat quite 
still just as he had left her on his bed, aghast. 

She could not even pray. 

The sun had still to rise ; the room was full of 
that cold weak inky light, light without warmth, 
knowledge without faith, existence without cour- 
age, that creeps in before the day. She waited. 
... In such a mood women have waited for 
massacre. . . . 

Downstairs a raucous shouting. . . . 

She thought of her happy childhood upon the 
Yorkshire wolds, before the idea of week-end 
parties had entered her mind. The heather. 
The little birds. Kind things. A tear ran down 
her cheek. . . . 


§11 

Then Sir Peter stood before her again, alive 
still, but breathless and greatly ruffled. 

She put her hands to her heart. She would be 
brave. 

^^Yes,^^ she said. ^'Tell me.^’ 

^'He’s as mad as a hatter,^’ said Sir Peter. 

She nodded for more. She knew that. 

^^Has he — killed anyone?” she whispered. 
^^He looked uncommonly like trying,” said Sir 
Peter. 

She nodded, her lips tightly compressed. 


54 


BEALBY 


^^Says Douglas will either have to leave the 
house or he does/' 

“But — Douglas !" 

“I know, but he won't hear a word." 

“ But why Douglas ? " 

“I tell you he's as mad as a hatter. Got per- 
secution mania. People tapping and bells ringing 
under his pillow all night — that sort of idea. . . . 
And furious. I tell you, — he frightened me. 
He was awful. He's given Mergleson a black 
eye. Hit him, you know. With his fist. Caught 
him in the passage to the priest hole — how they 
got there I don't know — and went for him like 
a madman." 

“But what has Douglas done?" 

“I know. I asked him, but he won't listen. 
He's just off his head. . . . Says Douglas has 
got the whole household trying to work a ghost 
on him. I tell you — he's off his nut." 

Husband and wife looked at each other. . . . 

“Of course if Douglas didn't mind just going off 
to oblige me," said Sir Peter at last. . . . 

“It might calm him," he explained. . . . 
“You see, it's all so infernally awkward. . . ." 

“Is he back in his room?" 

“Yes. Waiting for me to decide about Doug- 
las. Walking up and down." 

For a little while their minds remained prostrate 
and inactive. 

“I'd been so looking forward to the lunch," 
she said with a joyless smile. “The county — " 

She could not go on. 

“You know," said Sir Peter, “one thing, — 


A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 


55 


1^11 see to it myself. I wonT have him have a 
single drop of liquor more. If we have to search 
his room.^’ 

^^What I shall say to him at breakfast/^ she 
said, donT know.^’ 

Sir Peter reflected. There^s no earthly reason 
why you should be brought into it at all. Your 
line is to know nothing about it. Show him 
you know nothing about it. Ask him — ask him 
if he^s had a good night. . . ^ 


CHAPTER III 


THE WANDEKERS 

§ 1 

Never had the gracious eastward face of 
Shouts looked more beautiful than it did on the 
morning of the Lord Chancellor's visit. It 
glowed as translucent as amber lit by flames, 
its two towers were pillars of pale gold. It looked 
over its slopes and parapets upon a great valley 
of mist-barred freshness through which the distant 
river shone like a snake of light. The south-west 
fagade was still in the shadow, and the ivy hung 
from it darkly greener than the greenest green. 
The stained-glass windows of the old chapel 
reflected the sunrise as though lamps were burn- 
ing inside. Along the terrace a pensive peacock 
trailed his sheathed splendours through the dew. 

Amidst the ivy was a fuss of birds. 

And presently there was pushed out from amidst 
the ivy at the foot of the eastward tower a little 
brownish buff thing, that seemed as natural there 
as a squirrel or a rabbit. It was a head, — a 
ruffled human head. It remained still for a 
moment contemplating the calm spaciousness of 
terrace and garden and countryside. Then it 
emerged further and rotated and surveyed the 
56 


THE WANDERERS 


57 


house above it. Its expression was one of alert 
caution. Its natural freshness and innocence 
were a little marred by an enormous transverse 
smudge, a bar-sinister of smut, and the elfin 
delicacy of the left ear was festooned with a cob- 
web — probably a genuine antique. It was the 
face of Bealby. 

He was considering the advisability of leaving 
Shonts — for good. 

Presently his decision was made. His hands 
and shoulders appeared following his head, and 
then a dusty but undamaged Bealby was running 
swiftly towards the corner of the shrubbery. 
He crouched lest at any moment that pursuing 
pack of butlers should see him and give tongue. 
In another moment he was hidden from the house 
altogether, and rustling his way through a thicket 
of budding rhododendra. After those dirty pas- 
sages the morning air was wonderfully sweet — 
but just a trifle hungry. 

Grazing deer saw Bealby fly across the park, 
stared at him for a time with great gentle unin- 
telligent eyes, and went on feeding. 

They saw him stop ever and again. He was 
snatching at mushrooms, that he devoured forth- 
with as he sped on. 

On the edge of the beech- woods he paused and 
glanced back at Shonts. 

' Then his eyes rested for a moment on the clump 
of trees through which one saw a scrap of the head 
gardener^s cottage, a bit of the garden wall. . . . 

A physiognomist might have detected a certain 
lack of self-confidence in Bealby^s eyes. 


58 


BEALBY 


But his spirit was not to be quelled. Slowly, 
joylessly perhaps, but with a grave determina- 
tion, he raised his hand in that prehistoric gesture 
of the hand and face by which youth, since ever 
there was youth, has asserted the integrity of its 
soul against established and predominant things. 

Ketch me!’' said Bealby. 

§2 

Bealby left Shonts about half-past four in the 
morning. He went westward because he liked 
the company of his shadow and was amused at 
first by its vast length. By half-past eight he 
had covered ten miles, and he was rather bored 
by his shadow. He had eaten nine raw mush- 
rooms, two green apples and a quantity of unripe 
blackberries. None of these things seemed quite 
at home in him. And he had discovered himself 
to be wearing slippers. They were stout carpet 
slippers, but still they were slippers, — and the 
road was telling on them. At the ninth mile the 
left one began to give on the outer seam. He got 
over a stile into a path that ran through the corner 
of a wood, and there he met a smell of frying 
bacon that turned his very soul to gastric juice. 

He stopped short and sniffed the air — and the 
air itself was sizzling. 

^^Oh, Krikey,” said Bealby, manifestly to the 
Spirit of the World. ‘^This is a bit too strong. 
I wasn’t thinking much before.” 

Then he saw something bright yellow and bulky 
just over the hedge. 


THE WANDERERS 


59 


From this it was that the sound of frying came. 

He went to the hedge, making no effort to con- 
ceal himself. Outside a great yellow caravan with 
dainty little windows stood a largish dark woman 
in a deerstalker hat, a short brown skirt, a large 
white apron and spatterdashes (among other 
things), frying bacon and potatoes in a frying pan. 
She was very red in the face, and the frying pan 
was spitting at her as frying pans do at a timid 
cook. . . . 

Quite mechanically Bealby scrambled through 
the hedge and drew nearer this divine smell. 
The woman scrutinized him for a moment, and 
then blinking and averting her face went on with 
her cookery. 

Bealby came quite close to her and remained, 
noting the bits of potato that swam about in the 
pan, the jolly curling of the rashers, the dancing 
of the bubbles, the hymning splash and splutter 
of the happy fat. . . . 

(If it should ever fall to my lot to be cooked, 
may I be fried in potatoes and butter. May I 
be fried with potatoes and good butter made from 
the milk of the cow. God send I am spared 
boiling; the prison of the pot, the rattling lid, 
the evil darkness, the greasy water. . . .) 

‘‘1 suppose,’^ said the lady prodding with her 
fork at the bacon, suppose you call yourself a 
Boy.^’ 

^^Yes, miss,’’ said Bealby. 

^^Have you ever fried?” 
could, miss.” 

^^Like this?” 


60 


BEALBY 


Better.’’ 

Just lay hold of this handle — for it’s scorch- 
ing the skin off my face I am.” She seemed to 
think for a moment and added, entirely.” 

In silence Bealby grasped that exquisite smell 
by the handle, he took the fork from her hand 
and put his hungry eager nose over the seething 
mess. It wasn’t only bacon ; there were onions, 
onions giving it — an edge ! It cut to the quick 
of appetite. He could have wept with the inten- 
sity of his sensations. 

A voice almost as delicious as the smell came 
out of the caravan window behind Bealby ’s head. 
!” cried the voice. 

^^Here! — I mean, — it’s here I am,” said the 
lady in the deerstalker. 

‘‘Judy — you didn’t take my stockings for your 
own by any chance?” 

The lady in the deerstalker gave way to de- 
lighted horror. “Sssh, Mavourneen!” she cried 

— she was one of that large class of amiable 
women who are more Irish than they need be 

— “there’s a Boy here!” 

§3 

There was indeed an almost obsequiously indus- 
trious and obliging Boy. An hour later he was 
no longer a Boy but the Boy, and three friendly 
w’omen were regarding him with a merited approval. 

He had done the frying, renewed a waning fire 
with remarkable skill and dispatch, reboiled a 
neglected kettle in the shortest possible time, laid 
almost without direction a simple meal, very 


THE WANDERERS 


61 


exactly set out campstools and cleaned the frying 
pan marvellously. Hardly had they taken their 
portions of that appetizing savouriness, than he 
had whipped off with that implement, gone behind 
the caravan, busied himself there, and returned 
with the pan — glittering bright. Himself if 
possible brighter. One cheek indeed shone with 
an animated glow. 

^^But wasnT there some of the bacon and stuff 
left?^’ asked the lady in the deerstalker. 

didnT think it was wanted. Miss,” said 
Bealby. ^^So I cleared it up.” 

He met understanding in her eye. He ques- 
tioned her expression. 

^^MaynT I wash up for you, miss?” he asked to 
relieve the tension. 

He washed up, swiftly and cleanly. He had 
never been able to wash up to Mr. Mergleson^s 
satisfaction before, but now he did everything 
Mr. Mergleson had ever told him. He asked 
where to put the things away and he put them 
away. Then he asked politely if there was any- 
thing else he could do for them. Questioned, 
he said he liked doing things. ^^You haveuT,” 
said the lady in the deerstalker, ^^a taste for 
cleaning boots?” 

Bealby declared he had. 

Surely,” said a voice that Bealby adored, 
^^Tis an angel from heaven.” 

He had a taste for cleaning boots! This was 
an extraordinary thing for Bealby to say. But a 
great change had come to him in the last half- 
hour. He was violently anxious to do things, 


62 


BEALBY 


any sort of things, servile things, for a particular 
person. He was in love. 

The owner of the beautiful voice had come out of 
the caravan, she had stood for a moment in the 
doorway before descending the steps to the ground 
and the soul of Bealby had bowed down before 
her in instant submission. Never had he seen 
anything so lovely. Her straight slender body 
was sheathed in blue ; fair hair, a little tinged with 
red, poured gloriously back from her broad fore- 
head, and she had the sweetest eyes in the world. 
One hand lifted her dress from her feet ; the other 
rested on the lintel of the caravan door. She 
looked at him and smiled. 

So for two years she had looked and smiled 
across the footlights to the Bealby in mankind. 
She had smiled now on her entrance out of habit. 
She took the effect upon Bealby as a foregone 
conclusion. 

Then she had looked to make sure that every- 
thing was ready before she descended. 

“How good it smells, Judy she had said. 

“IVe had a helper, said the woman who wore 
spats. 

That time the blue-eyed lady had smiled at him 
quite definitely. . . . 

The third member of the party had appeared 
unobserved ; the irradiations of the beautiful lady 
had obscured her. Bealby discovered her about. 
She was bareheaded ; she wore a simple grey 
dress with a Norfolk jacket, and she had a pretty 
clear white profile under black hair. She answered 
to the name of “Winnie.’^ The beautiful lady 


THE WANDERERS 


63 


was Madeleine. They made little obscure jokes 
with each other and praised the morning ardently. 
^'This is the best place of all/^ said Madeleine. 

^'All night/^ said Winnie, ^^not a single mos- 
quito.’’ 

None of these three ladies made any attempt to 
conceal the sincerity of their hunger or their 
appreciation of Bealby’s assistance. How good a 
thing is appreciation ! Here he was doing, with 
joy and pride and an eager excellence, the very 
services he had done so badly under the cuffings 
of Mergleson and Thomas. . . . 

§4 

And now Bealby, having been regarded with 
approval for some moments and discussed in 
tantalizing undertones, was called upon to ex- 
plain himself. 

^^Boy,” said the lady in the deerstalker, who 
was evidently the leader and still more evidently 
the spokeswoman of the party, ^^come here.” 

^^Yes, miss.” He put down the boot he was 
cleaning on the caravan step. 

^Hn the first place, know by these presents, 
I am a married woman.” 

^^Yes, miss.” 

^^And miss is not a seemly mode of address 
for me.” 

^^No, miss. I mean — ” Bealby hung for a 
moment and by the happiest of accidents, a scrap 
of his instruction at Shonts came up in his mind. 
^'No,” he said, ^^your — ladyship.” 


64 


BEALBY 


A great light shone on the spokeswoman^s face. 
“ Not yet, my child, she said, not yet. He hasn^t 
done his duty by me. I am — a simple Mum.^’ 

Bealby was intelligently silent. 

Say — Yes, Mum.^^ 

^^Yes, Mum,” said Bealby and everybody 
laughed very agreeably. 

And now,” said the lady, taking pleasure in her 
words, “know by these presents — By the bye, 
what is your name?” 

Bealby scarcely hesitated. “DickMal-travers, 
Mum,” he said and almost added, “The Dauntless 
Daredevil of the Diamond-fields Horse,” which 
was the second title. 

“Dick will do,” said the lady who was called 
Judy, and added suddenly and very amusingly: 
“You may keep the rest.” 

(These were the sort of people Bealby liked. 
The right sort.) 

“Well, Dick, we want to know, have you ever 
been in service?” 

It was sudden. But Bealby was equal to it. 
“Only for a day or two, miss — I mean. Mum, 
— just to be useful.” 

“TTere you useful?” 

Bealby tried to think whether he had been, 
and could recall nothing but the face of Thomas 
with the fork hanging from it. “I did my best. 
Mum,” he said impartially. 

“And all that is over?” 

“Yes, Mum.” 

“And you’re at home again and out of employ- 
ment?” 


THE WANDERERS 


65 


'^Yes, Mum/^ 

you live near here?’^ 

“No — leastways, not very far.’’ 

“With your father.” 

“Stepfather, Mum. I’m a Norfan.” 

“Well, how would you like to come with us 
for a few days and help with things? Seven- 
and-sixpence a week.” 

Bealby’s face was eloquent. 

“Would your stepfather object?” 

Bealby considered. “I don’t think he would,” 
he said. 

“You’d better go round and ask him.” 

“I — suppose — yes,” he said. 

“And get a few things.” 

“Things, Mum?” 

“Collars and things. You needn’t bring a 
great box for such a little while.” 

“Yes, Mum. . . .” 

He hovered rather undecidedly. 

“Better run along now. Our man and horse 
will be coming presently. We shan’t be able to 
wait for you long. . . .” 

Bealby assumed a sudden briskness and de- 
parted. 

At the gate of the field he hesitated almost 
imperceptibly and then directed his face to the 
Sabbath stillness of the village. 

Perplexity corrugated his features. The step- 
father’s permission presented no difficulties, but 
it was more difficult about the luggage. 

A voice called after him. 

“Yes, Mum?” he said attentive and hopeful. 


66 


BEALBY 


Perhaps — somehow — they wouldn^t want lug- 
gage. 

You’ll want Boots. You’ll have to walk by 
the caravan, you know. You’ll want some good 
stout Boots.” 

^^All right, Mum,” he said with a sorrowful 
break in his voice. He waited a few moments 
but nothing more came. He went on — very 
slowdy. He had forgotten about the boots. 

That defeated him. . . . 

It is hard to be refused admission to Paradise 
for the want of a hand-bag and a pair of walking- 
boots. ... 

§5 

Bealby was by no means certain that he was 
going back to that caravan. He wanted to do 
so quite painfully, but — 

He’d just look a fool going back without boots 
and — nothing on earth would reconcile him to 
the idea of looking a fool in the eyes of that beau- 
tiful woman in blue. 

^^Dick,” he whispered to himself despondently, 
Daredevil Dick!” (A more miserable-looking 
face you never set eyes on.) It’s all up with your 
little schemes, Dick, my boy. You must get a 
bag — and nothing on earth will get you a bag.” 

He paid little heed to the village through which 
he wandered. He knew there were no bags 
there. Chance rather than any volition of his 
own guided him down a side path thahled to the 
nearly dry bed of a little rivulet, and there he sat • 
down on some weedy grass under a group of 


THE WANDERERS 


67 


willows. It was an untidy place that needed all 
the sunshine of the morning to be tolerable; 
one of those places where stinging nettles take 
heart and people throw old kettles, broken galli- 
pots, jaded gravel, grass cuttings, rusty rubbish, 
old boots — . 

For a time Bealby^s eyes rested on the objects 
with an entire lack of interest. 

Then he was reminded of his not so very remote 
childhood when he had found an old boot and made 
it into a castle. . . . 

Presenjdy he got up and walked across to the 
rubbish heap and surveyed its treasures with a 
quickened intelligence. He picked up a widowed 
boot and weighed it in his hand. 

He dropped it abruptly, turned about and 
hurried back into the village street. 

He had ideas, two ideas, one for the luggage 
and one for the boots. ... If only he could 
manage it. Hope beat his great pinions in the 
heart of Bealby. 

Sunday ! The shops were shut. Yes, that was 
a fresh obstacle. He^d forgotten that. 

The public-house stood bashfully open, the shy 
uninviting openness of Sunday morning before 
closing time, but public-houses, alas ! at all hours 
are forbidden to little boys. And besides he 
wasnT likely to get what he wanted in a public- 
house ; he wanted a shop, a general shop. And 
here before him was the general shop — and its 
door ajar ! His desire carried him over the thresh- 
old. The Sabbatical shutters made the place 
dark and cool, and the smell of bacon and cheese 


68 


BEALBY 


and chandleries, the very spirit of grocery, calm 
and unhurried, was cool and Sabbatical, too, as if 
it sat there for the day in its best clothes. And 
a pleasant woman was talking over the counter 
to a thin and worried one who carried a bundle. 

Their intercourse had a flavour of emergency, 
and they both stopped abruptly at the appearance 
of Bealby. 

His desire, his craving was now so great that it 
had altogether subdued the natural wiriness of 
his appearance. He looked meek, he looked 
good, he was swimming in propitiation and tender 
with respect. He produced an effect of being 
much smaller. He had got nice eyes. His 
movements were refined and his manners perfect. 

^^Not doing business to-day, my boy,^^ said 
the pleasant woman. 

‘^Oh, please ^m,^^ he said from his heart. 

^‘Sunday, you know.’’ 

‘‘Oh, please ’m. If you could just give me a 
nold sheet of paper ’m, please.” 

“AVhat for?” asked the pleasant woman. 

“Just to wrap something up ’m.” 

She reflected, and natural goodness had its way 
with her. 

“A nice hig bit?” said the woman. 

“Please ’m.” 

“Would you like it brown?” 

“Oh, please ’m.” 

“And you got some string?” 

“Only cottony stuff,” said Bealby, disem- 
bowelling a trouser pocket. “Wiv knots. But I 
dessay I can manage.” 


THE WANDERERS 


69 


^^You^d better have a bit of good string with 
it, my dear,’^ said the pleasant woman, whose 
generosity was now fairly on the run, ^^Then 
you can do your parcel up nice and tidy. , . 


The white horse was already in the shafts of 
the caravan, and William, a deaf and clumsy man 
of uncertain age and a vast sharp nosiness, was 
lifting in the basket of breakfast gear and grum- 
bling in undertones at the wickedness and unfair- 
ness of travelling on Sunday, when Bealby re- 
turned to gladden three waiting women. 

said the inconspicuous lady, knew 
he^d come.’’ 

^^Look at his poor little precious parsivel,” 
said the actress. 

Regarded as luggage it was rather pitiful; a 
knobby, brown paper parcel about the size — to 
be perfectly frank — of a tin can, two old boots 
and some grass, very carefully folded and tied 
up, — and carried gingerly. 

'^But — ” the lady in the deerstalker began, 
and then paused. 

^^Dick,” she said, as he came nearer, ^Vhere’s 
your boots?” 

^^Oh please. Mum,” said the dauntless one, 
“they was away being mended. My stepfather 
thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t 
have boots. He said perhaps I might be able to 
get some more boots out of my salary. ...” 

The lady in the deerstalker looked alarmingly 


70 


BEALBY 


uncertain and Bealby controlled infinite dis- 
tresses. 

“Haven^t you got a mother, Dick?^^ asked the 
beautiful voice suddenly. Its owner abounded 
in such spasmodic curiosities. 

^^She — last year. . . Matricide is a pain- 
ful business at any time. And just as you see, 
in spite of every effort you have made, the j oiliest 
lark in the world slipping out of your reach. 
And the sweet voice so sorry for him ! So sorry ! 
Bealby suddenly veiled his face with his elbow 
and gave way to honourable tears. . . . 

A simultaneous desire to make him happy, help 
him to forget his loss, possessed three women. . . . 

^^Thatffl be all right, Dick,’’ said the lady in 
the deerstalker, patting his shoulder. We’ll get 
you some boots to-morrow. And to-day you must 
sit up beside William and spare your feet. You’ll 
have to go to the inns with him. ...” 

^^It’s wonderful, the elasticity of youth,” 
said the inconspicuous lady five minutes later. 
^^To see that boy now, you’d never imagine he’d 
had a sorrow in the world.” 

“Now get up there,” said the lady who was the 
leader. “We shall walk across the fields and 
join you later. You understand where you 
are to wait for us, William?” 

She came nearer and shouted, “You under- 
stand, William?” 

William nodded ambiguously. “’Ent a Foo2,” 
he said. 

The ladies departed. “Fou’Z? be all right, 
Dick,” cried the actress kindly. 


THE WANDERERS 


71 


He sat up where he had been put, trying to 
look as Orphan Dick as possible after all that had 
occurred. 

§7 

Do you know the wind on the heath — have 
you lived the Gypsy life? Have you spoken, 
wanderers yourselves, with ^Romany chi and 
Romany chaR on the wind-swept moors at home 
or abroad? Have you tramped the broad high- 
ways, and, at close of day, pitched your tent 
near a running stream and cooked your supper 
by starlight over a fire of pinewood? Do you 
know the dreamless sleep of the wanderer at 
peace with himself and all the world ?^^ 

For most of us the answer to these questions 
of the Amateur Camping Club is in the negative. 

Yet every year the call of the road, the Borrovian 
glamour, draws away a certain small number 
of the imaginative from the grosser comforts 
of a complex civilization, takes them out into 
tents and caravans and intimate communion 
with nature, and, incidentally, with various in- 
genious appliances designed to meet the needs of 
cooking in a breeze. It is an adventure to which 
high spirits and great expectations must be 
brought, it is an experience in proximity which 
few friendships survive — and altogether very 
great fun. 

The life of breezy freedom resolves itself in 
practice chiefly into washing up and an anxious 
search for permission to camp. One learns how 
rich and fruitful our world can be in bystanders. 


72 


BEALBY 


and how easy it is to forget essential grocer- 
ies. . . . 

The heart of the joy of it lies in its perfect de- 
tachment. There you are in the morning sun- 
light under the trees that overhang the road, go- 
ing whither you will. Everything you need you 
have. Your van creaks along at your side. You 
are outside inns, outside houses, a home, a com- 
munity, an imperium in imperio. At any moment 
you may draw out of the traffic upon the wayside 
grass and say, Here — until the owner catches 
us at it — is home At any time — subject to 
the complaisance of William and your being able 
to find him — you may inspan and go onward. 
The world is all before you. You taste the com- 
plete yet leisurely insouciance of the snail. 

And two of those three ladies had other satis- 
factions to supplement their pleasures. They 
both adored Madeleine Philips. She was not 
only perfectly sweet and lovely, but she was 
known to be so ; she had that most potent charm 
for women, prestige. They had got her all to 
themselves. They could show now how false is 
the old idea that there is no friendship nor con- 
versation among women. They were full of wit 
and pretty things for one another and snatches 
of song in between. And they were free too from 
their ^‘menfolk.’’ They were doing without them. 
Dr. Bowles, the husband of the lady in the deer- 
stalker, was away in Ireland, and Mr. Geedge, 
the lord of the inconspicuous woman, was golfing 
at Sandwich. And Madeleine Philips, it was 
understood, was only too glad to shake herself 


THE WANDERERS 


73 


free from the crowd of admirers that hovered 
about her like wasps about honey. . . . 

Yet after three days each one had thoughts 
about the need of helpfulness and more particu- 
larly about washing-up, that were better left 
unspoken, that were indeed conspicuously un- 
spoken beneath their merry give and take, like 
a black and silent river flowing beneath a bridge 
of ivory. And each of them had a curious feeling 
in the midst of all this fresh free behaviour, as 
though the others were not listening sufficiently, 
as though something of the effect of them was 
being wasted. Madeleine’s smiles became rarer ; 
at times she was almost impassive, and Judy 
preserved nearly all her wit and verbal fireworks 
for the times when they passed through villages. 

. . . Mrs. Geedge was less visibly affected. She 
had thoughts of writing a book about it all, telling 
in the gayest, most provocative way, full of the 
quietest quaintest humour, just how jolly they 
had been. Menfolk would read it. This kept a 
little thin smile upon her lips. . . . 

As an audience William was tough stuff. He 
pretended deafness ; he never looked. He did not 
want to look. He seemed always to be holding 
his nose in front of his face to prevent his obser- 
vation — as men pray into their hats at church. 
But once Judy Bowles overheard a phrase or so 
in his private soliloquy. ''Pack o’ wimmin,” 
William was saying. "Dratted petticoats. Dang 
’em. That’s what I say to ’um. Dang ’em !” 

As a matter of fact, he just fell short of saying 
it to them. But his manner said it, . . . 


74 


BEALBY 


You begin to see how acceptable an addition 
was young Bealby to this company. He was not 
only helpful, immensely helpful, in things material, 
a vigorous and at first a careful washer-up, an 
energetic boot-polisher, a most serviceable cleaner 
and tidier of things, but he was also belief and 
support. Undisguisedly he thought the caravan 
the loveliest thing going, and its three mistresses 
the most wonderful of people. His alert eyes fol- 
lowed them about full of an unstinted admiration 
and interest ; he pricked his ears when Judy opened 
her mouth, he handed things to Mrs. Geedge. 
He made no secret. about Madeleine. When she 
spoke to him, he lost his breath, he reddened and 
was embarrassed. . . . 

They went across the fields saying that he was 
the luckiest of finds. It was fortunate his people 
had been so ready to spare him. Judy said boys 
were a race very cruelly maligned ; see how 
willing he was ! Mrs. Geedge said there was 
something elfin about Bealby’s little face ; Made- 
leine smiled at the thought of his quaint artless- 
ness. She knew quite clearly that heM die for 
her. . . . 

§8 

There was a little pause as the ladies moved 
away. 

Then William spat and spoke in a note of irra- 
tional bitterness. 

^^Brasted Voolery,^^ said William, and then 
loudly and fiercely, ^^Cam up, y’ode Runt you.^^ 

At these words the white horse started into 


THE WANDERERS 


75 


a convulsive irregular redistribution of its feet, 
the caravan strained and quivered into motion 
and Bealby^s wanderings as a caravanner began. 

For a time William spoke no more, and Bealby 
scarcely regarded him. The light of strange 
fortunes and deep enthusiasm was in Bealby^s 
eyes. . . . 

^^One Thing,^^ said William, ^Hhey donT ^ave 
the Sense to lock anythink up — whatever.’^ 

Bealby^s attention was recalled to the existence 
of his companion. 

William^s face was one of those faces that give 
one at first the impression of a solitary and very 
conceited nose. The other features are entirely 
subordinated to that salient effect. One sees 
them later. His eyes were small and uneven, 
his mouth apparently toothless, thin-lipped and 
crumpled, with the upper lip falling over the 
other in a manner suggestive of a meagre firmness 
mixed with appetite. When he spoke he made a 
faint slobbering sound. E very fink, he said, 
‘^behind there. 

He became confidential. been in there. 
I larked about wiv their Fings.’^ 

“They got some chocffate,’^ he said, lusciously. 
“OoFine!’^ 

“All sorts of Fings.’’ 

He did not seem to expect any reply from 
Bealby. 

“We going far before we meet ’em?’^ asked 
Bealby. 

WilHam^s deafness became apparent. 

His mind was preoccupied by other ideas. One 


76 


BEALBY 


wicked eye came close to Bealby^s face. '^We 
going to ^ave a bit of choc’late/’ he said in a wet 
desirous voice. 

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the 
door. You get it/’ said William with reassuring 
nods and the mouth much pursed and very 
oblique. 

Bealby shook his head. 

'Ht’s in a little dror, under ’er place where she 
sleeps.” 

Bealby’s head-shake became more emphatic. 

Yus, I tell you/’ said William. 

“No/’ said Bealby. 

“ Choc’late, I tell you/’ said William, and ran the 
tongue of appetite round the rim of his toothless 
mouth. 

“Don’t want choc’late,” said Bealby, thinking 
of a large lump of it. 

“Go on,” said William. “Nobody won’t see 

you. ...” 

“Go it!” said William. . . . 

“You’re afraid,” said William. . . . 

“Here, /’ll go,” said William, losing self- 
control. “You just ’old these reins.” 

Bealby took the reins. William got up and 
opened the door of the caravan. Then Bealby 
realized his moral responsibility — and, leaving 
the reins, clutched William firmly by his baggy 
nether garments. They were elderly garments, 
much sat upon. “Don’t be a Vool,” said William 
struggling. “Leago my slack.” 

Something partially gave way, and William’s 
head came round to deal with Bealby. 


THE WANDERERS 


77 


^^What you mean pullin’ my does orf me?” 

That,” — he investigated. Take me a Nour 
to sew up.” 

“I ain’t going to steal,” shouted Bealby into 
the ear of WTlliam. 

Nobody arst you to steal — ” 

'^Nor you neither,” said Bealby. 

The caravan bumped heavily against a low 
garden wall, skidded a little and came to rest. 
William sat down suddenly. The white horse, 
after a period of confusion with its legs, tried the 
flavour of some overhanging lilac branches and 
was content. 

Gimme those reins,” said William. ^^You 
be the Brastedest Young Vool. . . .” 

^^Sittin’ ’ere,” said William presently, chewin’ 
our teeth, when we might be eatin’ choc’late. 

’ent got no use for said William, 

^^blowed if I ’ave. . . .” 

Then the thought of his injuries returned to 
him. 

^^I’d make you sew ’em up yourself, darned 
if I wount — on’y you’d go running the brasted 
needle into me. . . . Nour’s work there is — by 
the feel of it. . . . Mor’n nour. . . . God- 
dobe done, too. ... All I got. . . .” 

I’ll give you Sumpfin, you little Beace, ’fore I 
done wi’ you.” 

wouldn’t steal ’er choc’lates,” said young 
Bealby, '^not if I was starving.” 

^^Eh?” shouted William. 

“/SfcaZ.'” shouted Bealby. 


78 


BEALBY 


steal ye, ^fore I done with ye,’^ said William. 
“Tearin’ my does for me. . . . Oh! Cam upy 
y’old Runt. We don^t want you to stop and 
lissen. Cam up, I tell you I 

§8 

They found the ladies rather, it seemed, by 
accident than design, waiting upon a sandy 
common rich with purple heather and bordered by 
woods of fir and spruce. They had been waiting 
some time, and it was clear that the sight of the 
yellow caravan relieved an accumulated anxiety. 
Bealby rejoiced to see them. His soul glowed 
with the pride of chocolate resisted and William 
overcome. He resolved to distinguish himself 
over the preparation of the midday meal. It 
was a pleasant little island of green they chose 
for their midday pitch, a little patch of emerald 
turf amidst the purple, a patch already doomed 
to removal, as a bare oblong and a pile of rolled-up 
turfs witnessed. This pile and a little bank of 
heather and bramble promised shelter from the 
breeze, and down the hill a hundred yards away 
was a spring and a built-up pool. This spot 
lay perhaps fifty yards away from the high 
road and one reached it along a rutty track which 
had been made by the turf cutters. And overhead 
was the glorious sky of an English summer, with 
great clouds like sunlit, white-sailed ships, the 
Constable sky. The white horse was hobbled and 
turned out to pasture among the heather, and. 
William was sent off to get congenial provender 


THE WANDERERS 


79 


at the nearest public house. William shouted 
Mrs. Bowles as he departed, shouting confiden- 
tially into his ear, Get your clothes mended. ” 

^^Eh?^’ said William. 

^^Mend your clothes.^’ 

Yah ! ’E did that,’^ said William viciously 
with a movement of self-protection, and so went. 

Nobody watched him go. Almost sternly they 
set to work upon the luncheon preparation as 
William receded. ^^William,^^ Mrs. Bowles re- 
marked, as she bustled with the patent cooker, 
putting it up wrong way round so that afterwards 
it collapsed, William — takes offence. Some- 
times I think he takes offence almost too often. 
. . . Did you have any difficulty with him, 
Dick?^^ 

^Gt wasn’t anything, miss,” said Bealby meekly. 

Bealby was wonderful with the firelighting, and 
except that he cracked a plate in warming it, 
quite admirable as a cook. He burnt his fingers 
twice — and liked doing it ; he ate his portion 
with instinctive modesty on the other side of 
the caravan and he washed up — as Mr. Mergle- 
son had always instructed him to do. Mrs. 
Bowles showed him how to clean knives and forks 
by sticking them into the turf. A little to his 
surprise these ladies lit and smoked cigarettes. 
They sat about and talked perplexingly. Clever 
stuff. Then he had to get water from the neigh- 
bouring brook and boil the kettle for an early 
tea. Madeleine produced a charmingly bound 
little book and read in it, the other two professed 
themselves anxious for the view from a neighbour- 


80 


BEALBY 


ing hill. They produced their sensible spiked 
walking sticks such as one does not see in England ; 
they seemed full of energy. ^^You go/^ Made- 
leine had said, “while I and Dick stay here and 
make tea. IVe walked enough to-day. . . 

So Bealby, happy to the pitch of ecstacy, first 
explored the wonderful interior of the caravan, — 
there was a dresser, a stove, let-down chairs and 
tables and all manner of things, — and then nursed 
the kettle to the singing stage on the patent 
cooker while the beautiful lady reclined close at 
hand on a rug. 

“Dick!” she said. 

He had forgotten he was Dick. 

“Dick!” 

He remembered his personality with a start. 
“Yes, miss!” He knelt up, with a handful of 
twigs in his hand and regarded her. 

“TTeZZ, Dick,” she said. 

He remained in flushed adoration. There was 
a little pause and the lady smiled at him an un- 
affected smile. 

“What are you going to be, Dick, when you 
grow up?” 

“I donT know, miss. IVe wondered.” 

“What would you like to be?” 

“Something abroad. Something — so that you 
could see things.” 

“A soldier?” 

“Or a sailor, miss.” 

“A sailor sees nothing but the sea.” 

“I’d rather be a sailor than a common soldier, 
miss.” 


THE WANDERERS 


81 


like to be an officer?^’ 

^^Yes, miss — only — 

^‘One of my very best friends is an officer/^ 
she said, a little irrelevantly it seemed to Bealby. 

^^I’d be a Norficer like a shot,’’ said Bealby, 
^^if I ’ad ’arf a chance, miss.” 

^'Officers nowadays,” she said, ^'have to be 
very brave, able men.” 

know, miss,” said Bealby modestly. . . . 

The fire required attention for a little while. 

The lady turned over on her elbow. '^What 
do you think you are likely to be, Dick!” she 
asked. 

He didn’t know. 

^^What sort of man is your stepfather? ” 

Bealby looked at her. ^^He isn’t much,” he 
said. 

^^What is he?” 

Bealby hadn’t the slightest intention of being 
the son of a gardener. ’E’s a law-writer.” 

^^What ! in that village.” 

“’E ’as to stay there for ’is ’ealth, miss,” he 
said. ''Every summer. ’Is ’ealth is very pre- 
precocious, miss. ...” 

He fed his fire with a few judiciously ad- 
ministered twigs. 

"What was your own father, Dick?” 

With that she opened a secret door in Bealby’s 
imagination. All stepchildren have those dreams. 
With him they were so frequent and vivid that 
they had long since become a kind of second 
truth. He coloured a little and answered with 


82 


BEALBY 


scarcely an interval for reflection. passed 

as Mal-travers/^ he said. 

Wasn’t that his name?” 

don’t rightly know, miss. There was 
always something kep’ from me. My mother 
used to say, ^ Artie,’ she used to say: there’s 
things that some day you must know, things 
that concern you. Things about your farver. 
But poor as we are now and struggling. . . . 
Not yet. . . . Some day you shall know truly 
— who you areJ That was ’ow she said it, miss.” 

^^And she died before she told you?” 

He had almost forgotten that he had killed his 
mother that very morning. “Yes, miss,” he 
said. 

She smiled at him and something in her smile 
made him blush hotly. For a moment he could 
have believed she understood. And indeed, she 
did understand, and it amused her to find this boy 
doing — what she herself had done at times — 
what indeed she felt it was still in her to do. She 
felt that most delicate of sympathies, the sym- 
pathy of one rather over-imaginative person for 
another. But her next question dispelled his 
doubt of her though it left him red and hot. She 
asked it with a convincing simplicity. 

“Have you any idea, Dick, have you any 
guess or suspicion, I mean, who it is you really 
are?” 

“I wish I had, miss,” he said. “I suppose it 
doesn’t matter, really — but one can’t help 
wondering. ...” 

Ho'w often he had wondered in his lonely wander- 


THE WANDERERS 


83 


ings through that dear city of day-dreams where 
all the people one knows look out of windows as 
one passes and the roads are paved with pride ! 
How often had he decided and changed and de- 
cided again ! 

§9 

Now suddenly a realization of intrusion 
shattered this conversation. A third person stood 
over the little encampment, smiling mysteriously 
and waving a cleek in a slow hieratic manner 
through the air. 

^^De licious lilF cornV’ said the newcomer in 
tones of benediction. 

He met their enquiring eyes with a luxurious 
smile, Licious,’^ he said, and remained swaying 
insecurely and failing to express some imper- 
fectly apprehended deep meaning by short pe- 
culiar movements of the cleek. 

He was obviously a golfer astray from some 
adjacent course — and he had lunched. 

Mighty Join you, he said, and then very dis- 
tinctly in a full large voice, '^Miss Madeleine 
Philps.^^ There are the penalties of a public and 
popular life. 

“He^s drunk the lady whispered. ''Get him 
to go away, Dick. I canT endure drunken men.^’ 

She stood up and Bealby stood up. He ad- 
vanced in front of her, slowly with his nose in 
the air, extraordinarily like a small terrier smell- 
ing at a strange dog. 

"I said Mighty Join-you,’^ the golfer repeated. 
His voice was richly excessive. He was a big 


84 


BEALBY 


heavy man with a short-cropped moustache, a 
great deal of neck and dewlap and a solemn 
expression. 

^^Prup. Be’r. Introzuze m’self,^^ he remarked. 
He tried to indicate himself by waving his hand 
towards himself, but finally abandoned the attempt 
as impossible. '^Ma^ Goo’ Soch’l Poshishun,” 
he said. 

Bealby had a disconcerting sense of retreating 
footsteps behind him. He glanced over his 
shoulder and saw Miss Philips standing at the 
foot of the steps that led up to the fastnesses 
of the caravan. ^^Dick,” she cried with a sharp 
note of alarm in her voice, ^^get rid of that man.” 

A moment after Bealby heard the door shut and 
a sound of a key in its lock. He concealed his 
true feelings by putting his arms akimbo, sticking 
his legs wider apart and contemplating the task 
before him with his head a little on one side. He 
was upheld by the thought that the yellow cara- 
van had a window looking upon him. . . . 

The newcomer seemed to consider the ceremony 
of introduction completed. I done care for 
goff,” he said, almost vaingloriously. 

He waved his cleek to express his preference. 
^^Natua,” he said with a satisfaction that bordered 
on fatuity. 

He prepared to come down from the little turfy 
crest on which he stood to the encampment. 

^^’Ere!” said Bealby. ^^This is Private.” 

The golfer indicated by solemn movements 
of the cleek that this was understood but that 
other considerations overrode it. 


THE WANDERERS 


85 


^^You — You got to go!^^ cried Bealby in a 
breathless squeak. ^^You get out of here.^’ 

The golfer waved an arm as who should say, 
^^You do not understand, but I forgive you,^’ 
and continued to advance towards the fire. 
And then Bealby, at the end of his tact, com- 
menced hostilities. 

He did so because he felt he had to do some- 
thing, and he did not know what else to do. 

^^Wan’ nothin’ but frenly conversation sushus 
custm’ry webred peel,” the golfer was saying, and 
then a large fragment of turf hit him in the neck, 
burst all about him and stopped him abruptly. 

He remained for some lengthy moments too 
astonished for words. He was not only greatly 
surprised, but he chose to appear even more 
surprised than he was. In spite of the brown- 
black mould upon his cheek and brow and a 
slight displacement of his cap, he achieved a sort 
of dignity. He came slowly to a focus upon 
Bealby, who stood by the turf pile grasping a 
second missile. The cleek was extended sceptre- 
wise. 

^'Replace the — Divot.” 

^'You go orf,” said Bealby. chuck it if 

you don’t. I tell you fair.” 

Replace the — Divot,” roared the golfer again 
in a voice of extraordinary power. 

^^You — you go!” said Bealby. 

^^Am I t’ask you. Third time. Reshpect — 
Roos. . . . Replace the Divot.” 

It struck him fully in the face. 

He seemed to emerge through the mould. He 


86 


BEALBY 


was blinking but still dignified. — was 

intentional/^ he said. 

He seemed to gather himself together. . . . 

Then suddenly and with a surprising nimbleness 
he discharged himself at Bealby. He came with 
astonishing swiftness. He got within a foot of 
him. Well, it was for Bealby that he had learnt 
to dodge in the village playground. He went 
down under the golfer^s arm and away round 
the end of the stack, and the golfer with his 
force spent in concussion remained for a time 
clinging to the turf pile and apparently trying to 
remember how he got there. Then he was re- 
minded of recent occurrences by a shrill small 
voice from the other side of the stack. 

^^You gow away!’’ said the voice. Can’t 
you see you’re annoying a lady ? You gow away.” 

Nowish — ’noy anyone. Pease wall wirl.” 

But this was subterfuge. He meant to catch 
that boy. Suddenly and rather brilliantly he 
turned the flank of the turf pile and only a couple of 
loose turfs at the foot of the heap upset his calcula- 
tions. He found himself on all fours on ground 
from which it was difficult to rise. But he did 
not lose heart. Boy — hie — scow,” he said, and 
became for a second rush a nimble quadruped. 

Again he got quite astonishingly near to Bealby, 
and then in an instant was on his feet and running 
across the encampment after him. He succeeded 
in kicking over the kettle, and the patent cooker, 
without any injury to himself or loss of pace, 
and succumbed only to the sharp turn behind the 
end of the caravan and the steps. He hadn’t 


THE WANDERERS 


87 


somehow thought of the steps. So he went down 
rather heavily. But now the spirit of a fine man 
was roused. Regardless of the scream from 
inside that had followed his collapse, he was up 
and in pursuit almost instantly. Bealby only 
escaped the swiftness of his rush by jumping the 
shafts and going away across the front of the cara- 
van to the turf pile again. The golfer tried to 
jump the shafts too, but he was not equal to 
that. He did in a manner jump. But it was al- 
most as much diving as jumping. And there was 
something in it almost like the curvetting of a 
Great Horse. . . . 

When Bealby turned at the crash, the golfer 
was already on all fours again and trying very 
busily to crawl out between the shaft and the 
front wheel. He would have been more successful 
in doing this if he had not begun by putting his 
arm through the wheel. As it was, he was trying 
to do too much ; he was trying to crawl out at 
two points at once and getting very rapidly 
annoyed at his inability to do so. The caravan 
was shifting slowly forward. . . . 

It was manifest to Bealby that getting this man 
to go was likely to be a much more lengthy busi- 
ness than he had supposed. 

He surveyed the situation for a moment, and 
then realizing the entanglement of his opponent, 
he seized a camp-stool by one leg, went round by 
the steps and attacked the prostrate enemy 
from the rear with effectual but inconclusive 
fury. He hammered. . . . 

Steady on, young man/^ said a voice, and he 


88 


BEALBY 


was seized from behind. He turned — to dis- 
cover himself in the grip of a second golfer. . . . 

Another ! Bealby fought in a fury of fear. . . . 

He bit an arm — rather too tweedy to feel much 
— and got in a couple of shinners — alas ! that 
they were only slippered shinners ! — before he 
was overpowered. . . . 

A cuffed, crumpled, disarmed and panting 
Bealby found himself watching the careful ex- 
traction of the first golfer from the front wheel. 
Two friends assisted that gentleman with a 
reproachful gentleness, and his repeated state- 
ments that he was all right seemed to reassure 
them greatly. Altogether there were now four 
golfers in the field, counting the pioneer. 

^^He was after this devil of a boy,^^ said the one 
who held Bealby. 

^^Yes, but how did he get here?” asked the man 
who was gripping Bealby. 

^^Feel better now?” skid the third, helping the 
first comer to his uncertain feet. ^^Let me have 
your cleek o, man. . . . You wonT want your 
cleek. . . .” 

Across the heather, lifting their heads a little, 
came Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Geedge, returning 
from their walk. They were wondering who- 
ever their visitors could be. 

And then like music after a dispute came 
Madeleine Philips, a beautiful blue-robed thing, 
coming slowly with a kind of wonder on her face, 
out of the caravan and down the steps. In- 
stinctively everybody turned to her. The drunk- 
ard with a gesture released himself from his 


THE WANDERERS 


89 


supporter and stood erect. His cap was re- 
placed upon him — obliquely. His cleek had 
been secured. 

“I heard a noise/^ said Madeleine, lifting her 
pretty chin and speaking in her sweetest tones. 
She looked her enquiries. . . . 

She surveyed the three sober men with a prac- 
tised eye. She chose the tallest, a fair, serious- 
looking young man standing conveniently at 
the drunkard’s elbow. 

'^Will you please take your friend away,” she 
said, indicating the offender with her beautiful 
white hand. 

^^Simly,” he said in a' slightly subdued voice, 
^^simly coring.” 

Everybody tried for a moment to understand 
him. 

*^Look here, old man, you’ve got no business 
here,” said the fair young man. You’d better 
come back to the club house.” 

The drunken man stuck to his statement. 
^^Simly coring,” he said a little louder. 

think , said a little bright-eyed man with a 
very cheerful yellow vest, think he’s apolo- 
gizing. I hope so.” 

The drunken man nodded his head. That 
among other matters. 

The tall young man took his arm, but he in- 
sisted on his point. ^'Simly coring,” he said 
with emphasis. “If — if — done wan^ me to cor. 
Notome. Nottot. . . . Mean’ say. Nottot 

tat-tome. Nottotome. Orny way — sayin’ 

not-ome. No wish ’trude. No wish ’all.” 


90 


BEALBY 


“Well, then, you see, you^d better come away/^ 

“I ars^ you — are you tome? Miss — Miss 
Pips/^ He appealed to Miss Philips. 

“If you^d answer him — ” said the tall young 
man. 

“No, sir,^’ she said with great dignity and the 
pretty chin higher than ever. “I am not at 
home.’^ 

“Nuthin^ more t’ say then,’^ said the drunken 
man, and with a sudden stoicism he turned away. 

“Come,^^ he said, submitting to support. 

“Simly orny arfnoon cor,’^ he said generally 
and permitted himself to be led off. 

“Orny frenly cor. . . 

For some time he was audible as he receded, 
explaining in a rather condescending voice the 
extreme social correctness of his behaviour. Just 
for a moment or so there was a slight tussle, due 
to his desire to return and leave cards. . . . 

He was afterwards seen to be distributing a 
small handful of visiting cards amidst the heather 
with his free arm, rather in the manner of a paper 
chase — but much more gracefully. . . . 

Then decently and in order he was taken out of 
sight. . . . 

§10 

Bealby had been unostentatiously released by his 
captor as soon as Miss Philips appeared, and the 
two remaining golfers now addressed themselves 
to the three ladies in regret and explanation. 

The man who had held Bealby was an aquiline 
grey-clad person with a cascade moustache and 


THE WANDERERS 


91 


wrinkled eyes, and for some obscure reason he 
seemed to be amused ; the little man in the yellow 
vest, however, was quite earnest and serious 
enough to make up for him. He was one of 
those little fresh-coloured men w’hose faces stick 
forward openly. He had open projecting eyes, 
an open mouth, his cheeks were frank to the pitch 
of ostentation, his cap was thrust back from his 
exceptionally open forehead. He had a chest 
and a stomach. There, too, he held out. He 
would have held out anything. His legs leant 
forward from the feet. It was evidently im- 
possible for a man of his nature to be anything 
but clean shaved. . . . 

'^Our fault entirely,’^ he said. Ought to 
have looked after him. CanT say how sorry 
and ashamed we are. CanT say how sorry we 
are he caused you any inconvenience.^^ 

^^Of course,^^ said Mrs. Bowles, ^^our boy- 
servant ought not to have pelted him.’^ 

^^He didnT exactly pelt him, dear,^^ said Made- 
leine. . . . 

^^Well, anyhow our friend ought not to have 
been off his chain. It was our affair to look after 
him and we didn’t. . . . 

^'You see,” the open young man went on, with 
the air of lucid explanation, ^'he’s our worst 
player. And he got round in a hundred and 
twenty-seven. And beat — somebody. And — 
it’s upset him. It’s not a bit of good dis- 
guising that we’ve been letting him drink. . . . 
We have. To begin with, we encouraged him. 
. . . We oughtn’t to have let him go. But 


92 


BEALBY 


we thought a walk alone might do him good. 
And some of us were a bit off him. Fed up 
rather. You see he^d been singing, would go on 
singing. . . 

He went on to propitiations. Anything the 
club can do to show how we regret. ... If 
you would like to pitch — later on in our rough 
beyond the pinewoods. . . . You^d find it safe 
and secluded. . . . Custodian — most civil man. 
Get you water or anything you wanted. Es- 
pecially after all that has happened. . . 

Bealby took no further part in these concluding 
politenesses. He had a curious feeling in his 
mind that perhaps he had not managed this 
affair quite so well as he might have done. He 
ought to have been more tactful like, more per- 
suasive. He was a fool to have started chuck- 
ing. . . . Well, well. He picked up the over- 
turned kettle and went off down the hill to get 
water. . . . 

What had she thought of him? . . . 

In the meantime one can at least boil kettles. 

§11 

One consequence of this little incident of the 
rejoicing golfer was that the three ladies were no 
longer content to dismiss William and Bealby 
at nightfall and sleep unprotected in the caravan. 
And this time their pitch was a lonely one with 
only the golf club-house within call. They were 
inclined even to distrust the golf club. So it 
was decided, to his great satisfaction, that Bealby 


THE WANDERERS 


93 


should have a certain sleeping sack Mrs. Bowles 
had brought with her and that he should sleep 
therein between the wheels. 

This sleeping sack was to have been a great 
feature of the expedition, but when it came to 
the test Judy could not use it. She had not an- 
ticipated that feeling of extreme publicity the 
open air gives one at first. It was like having 
all the world in one^s bedroom. Every night 
she had relapsed into the caravan. 

Bealby did not mind what they did with him 
so long as it meant sleeping. He had had a 
long day of it. He undressed sketchily and 
wriggled into the nice woolly bag and lay for a 
moment listening to the soft bumpings that were 
going on overhead. She was there. He had 
the instinctive confidence of our sex in women, 
and here were three of them. He had a vague 
idea of getting out of his bag again and kissing 
the underside of the van that held this dear 
beautiful creature. . . . 

He didnT. ... 

Such a lot of things had happened that day — 
and the day before. He had been going without 
intermission, it seemed now for endless hours. 
He thought of trees, roads, dew-wet grass, frying- 
pans, pursuing packs of gigantic butlers hope- 
lessly at fault, — no doubt they were hunting 
now — chinks and crannies, tactless missiles fly- 
ing, bursting, missiles it was vain to recall. He 
stared for a few seconds through the wheel spokes 
at the dancing, crackling fire of pine-cones which 
it had been his last duty to replenish, stared and 


94 


BEALBY 


blinked much as a little dog might do and then he 
had slipped away altogether into the world of 
dreams. . . . 

§ 12 

In the morning he was extraordinarily hard to 
wake. . . . 

^^Is it after sleeping all day ye^d be?^' cried 
Judy Bowles, who was always at her most Irish 
about breakfast time. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 

§1 

Monday was a happy day for Bealby. 

The caravan did seventeen miles and came to 
rest at last in a sloping field outside a cheerful 
little village set about a green on which was a 
long tent professing to be a theatre. ... At 
the first stopping-place that possessed a general 
shop Mrs. Bowles bought Bealby a pair of boots. 
Then she had a bright idea. ‘^Got any pocket 
money, Dick?” she asked. 

She gave him half a crown, that is to say she 
gave him two shillings and sixpence, or five 
sixpences or thirty pennies — •, according as you 
choose to look at it — in one large undivided 
shining coin. 

Even if he had not been in love, here surely was 
incentive to a generous nature to help and do 
distinguished services. He dashed about doing 
things. The little accident on Sunday had 
warned him to be careful of the plates, and the 
only flaw upon a perfect day^s service was the 
dropping of an egg on its way to the frying-pan 
for supper. It remained where it fell and there 
presently he gave it a quiet burial. There was 
nothing else to be done with it. . . . 

95 


96 


BEALBY 


All day long at intervals Miss Philips smiled 
at him and made him do little services for her. 
And in the evening, after the custom of her 
great profession when it keeps holiday, she in- 
sisted on going to the play. She said it would 
be the loveliest fun. She went with Mrs. Bowles 
because Mrs. Geedge wanted to sit quietly in 
the caravan and write down a few little things 
while they were still fresh in her mind. And 
it wasn^t in the part of Madeleine Philips not to 
insist that both William and Bealby must go 
too ; she gave them each a shilling — though 
the prices were sixpence, threepence, two-pence 
and a penny — and Bealby saw his first real 
play. 

It was called Brothers in Bloodj or the Gentleman 
Ranker. There was a poster — which was only 
very slightly justified by the performance — of 
a man in khaki with a bandaged head proposing 
to sell his life dearly over a fallen comrade. 

One went to the play through an open and 
damaged field gate and across trampled turf. 
Outside the tent were two paraffin flares illuminat- 
ing the poster and a small cluster of the impecu- 
nious young. Within on grass that was worn and 
bleached were benches, a gathering audience, a 
piano played by an off-hand lady, and a drop 
scene displaying the Grand Canal, Venice. The 
Grand Canal was infested by a crowded multitude 
of zealous and excessive reflections of the palaces 
above and by peculiar crescentic black boats 
floating entirely out of water and having no 
reflections at all. The off-hand lady gave a 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


97 


broad impression of the wedding march in Lohen- 
grin, and the back seats assisted by a sort of 
gastric vocalization called humming and by 
whistling between the teeth. Madeleine Philips 
evidently found it tremendous fun, even before 
the curtain rose. 

And then — illusion. . . . 

The scenery was ridiculous ; it waved about, 
the actors and actresses were surely the most piti- 
ful of their tribe and every invention in the play 
impossible, but the imagination of Bealby, like the 
lovingkindness of God, made no difficulties; it 
rose and met and embraced and gave life to all 
these things. It was a confused story in the play, 
everybody was more or less somebody else all 
the way through, and it got more confused in 
Bealby^s mind, but it was clear from the outset 
that there was vile work afoot, nets spread and 
sweet simple people wronged. And never were 
sweet and simple people quite so sweet and simple. 
There was the wrongful brother who was weak 
and wicked and the rightful brother who was 
vindictively, almost viciously, good, and there was 
an ingrained villain who was a baronet, a man 
who wore a frock coat and a silk hat and carried 
gloves and a stick in every scene and upon all 
occasions — that sort of man. He looked askance, 
always. There was a dear simple girl, with a vast 
sweet smile, who was loved according to their 
natures by the wrongful and the rightful brother, 
and a large wicked red-clad, lip-biting woman 
whose passions made the crazy little stage quiver. 
There was a comic butler — very different stuff 


BEALBY 


from old Mergleson — who wore an evening coat 
and plaid trousers and nearly choked Bealby. 
Why weren^t all butlers like that? Funny. 
And there were constant denunciations. Always 
there were denunciations going on or denuncia- 
tions impending. That took Bealby particu- 
larly. Never surely in all the world were bad 
people so steadily and thoroughly scolded and 
told what. Everybody hissed them ; Bealby 
hissed them. And when they were told what, 
he applauded. And yet they kept on with 
their wickedness to the very curtain. They 
retired — askance to the end. Foiled but pur- 
suing. ^^A time will come,^^ they said. 

There was a moment in the distresses of the 
heroine when Bealby dashed aside a tear. And 
then at last most wonderfully it all came right. 
The company lined up and hoped that Bealby 
was satisfied. Bealby wished he had more hands. 
His heart seemed to fill his body. Oh 'prime! 
prime! . . . 

And out he came into the sympathetic night. 
But he was no longer a trivial Bealby ; his soul 
was purged, he was a strong and silent man, 
ready to explode into generous repartee or nerve 
himself for high endeavour. He slipped off in 
the opposite direction from the caravan be- 
cause he wanted to be alone for a time and feel. 
He did not want to jar upon a sphere of glorious 
illusion that had blown up in his mind like a 
bubble. . . . 

He was quite sure that he had been wronged. 
Not to be wronged is to forego the first privilege 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


99 


of goodness. He had been deeply wronged by 
a plot, — all those butlers were in the plot or 
why should they have chased him, — he was 
much older than he really was, it had been kept 
from him, and in truth he was a rightful earl. 
^‘Earl Shonts,^^ he whispered; and indeed, why 
not ? And Madeleine too had been wronged ; 
she had been reduced to wander in this uncom- 
fortable caravan ; this Gipsy Queen ; she had 
been brought to it by villains, the same villains 
who had wronged Bealby. . . . 

Out he went into the night, the kindly consent- 
ing summer night, where there is nothing to be 
seen or heard that will contradict these delicious 
wonderful persuasions. 

He was so full of these dreams that he strayed 
far away along the dark country lanes and had 
at last the utmost difficulty in finding his way 
back to the caravan. And when ultimately he got 
back after hours and hours of heroic existence it 
did not even seem that they had missed him. It 
did not seem that he had been away half an 
hour. 

§2 

Tuesday was not so happy a day for Bealby 
as Monday. 

Its shadows began when Mrs. Bowles asked 
him in a friendly tone when it was clean-collar day. 

He was unready with his answer. 

^^And donT you ever use a hair brush, Dick?” 
she asked. ^H^m sure now there's one in your 
parcel.” 


100 


BEALBY 


“I do use it sometimes j Mum/^ he admitted. 

^^Aixd IVe never detected you with a tooth- 
brush yet. Though that perhaps is extreme. 
And Dick — soap ? I think you^d better be let- 
ting me give you a cake of soap.’’ 

^‘I’d be very much obliged, Mum.” 

“I hardly dare hint, Dick, at a clean hand- 
kerchief. Such things are known.” 

^^If you wouldn’t mind — when I’ve got the 
breakfast things done, Mum. . . 

The thing worried him all through breakfast. 
He had not expected — personalities from Mrs. 
Bowles. More particularly personalities of this 
kind. He felt he had to think hard. 

He affected modesty after he had cleared away 
breakfast and carried off his little bundle to a 
point in the stream which was masked from the 
encampment by willows. With him he also 
brought that cake of soap. He began by washing 
his handkerchief, which was bad policy because that 
left him no dry towel but his jacket. He ought, 
he perceived, to have secured a dish-cloth or a 
newspaper. (This he must remember on the 
next occasion.) He did over his hands and the 
more exposed parts of his face with soap and 
jacket. Then he took off and examined his col- 
lar. It certainly was pretty bad. . . . 

“Why!” cried Mrs. Bowles when he returned, 
“that’s still the same collar.” 

“They all seem to’ve got crumpled ’m,” said 
Bealby. 

“But are they all as dirty?” 

“I ’ad some blacking in my parcel,” said 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


101 


Bealby, ^^and it got loose. Mum. I’ll have to 
get another collar when we come to a shop.” 

It was a financial sacrifice, but it was the only 
way, and when they came to the shop Bealby 
secured a very nice collar indeed, high with 
pointed turn-down corners, so that it cut his 
neck all round, jabbed him under the chin and 
gave him a proud upcast carriage of the head 
that led to his treading upon and very completely 
destroying a stray plate while preparing lunch. 
But it was more of a man’s collar, he felt, than 
anything he had ever worn before. And it cost 
sixpence halfpenny, six dee and a half. 

(I should have mentioned that while washing 
up the breakfast things he had already broken 
the handle off one of the breakfast cups. Both 
these accidents deepened the cloud upon his day.) 

And then there was the trouble of William. 
William having meditated upon the differences 
between them for a day had now invented an 
activity. As Bealby sat beside him behind the 
white horse he was suddenly and frightfully 
pinched. Gee I One wanted to yelp. 

Choc’late,” said William through his teeth 
and very very savagely. ^^Now then.” 

After William had done that twice Bealby 
preferred to walk beside the caravan. There- 
upon William whipped up the white horse and 
broke records and made all the crockery sing to- 
gether and forced the pace until he was spoken 
to by Mrs. Bowles. . . . 

It was upon a Bealby thus depressed and 
worried that the rumour of impending “men- 


102 


BEALBY 


folk’^ came. It began after the party had stopped 
for letters at a village post office; there were 
not only letters but a telegram, that Mrs. Bowles 
read with her spats far apart and her head on 
one side. ^^Ye^d like to know about it,” she said 
waggishly to Miss Philips, ^^and you just shan^t.^^ 

She then went into her letters. 

^^YouVe got some news,’' said Mrs. Geedge. 
have that,” said Mrs. Bowles, and not a 
word more could they get from her. . . . 

^G’ll keep my news no longer,” said Mrs. 
Bowles, lighting her cigarette after lunch as 
Bealby hovered about clearing away the banana 
skins and suchlike vestiges of dessert. To- 
morrow night as ever is, if so be we get to Win- 
thorpe-Sutbury, there’ll be Men among us.” 

^^But Tom’s not coming,” said Mrs. Geedge. 

“He asked Tim to tell me to tell you.” 

“And you’ve kept it these two hours, Judy.” 

“For your own good and peace of mind. But 
now the murther’s out. Come they will, your 
Man and my Man, pretending to a pity because 
they can’t do without us. But like the self- 
indulgent monsters they are, they must needs 
stop at some grand hotel, Redlake he calls it, 
the Royal, on the hill above Winthorpe-Sutbury. 
The Royal ! The very name describes it. Can’t 
you see the lounge, girls, with its white cane 
chairs? And saddlebacks! No other hotel it 
seems is good enough for them, and we if you 
please are asked to go in and have — what does 
the man call it — the ^ comforts of decency ’ — 
and let the caravan rest for a bit.” 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


103 


^^Tim promised me I should run wild as long 
as I chose/ ^ said Mrs. Geedge, looking anything 
but wild. 

“They^re after thinking weVe had enough of 
it/’ said Mrs. Bowles. 

^^It sounds like that.” 

'^Sure I’d go on like this for ever,” said Judy. 
^^’Tis the Man and the House and all of it that 
oppresses me. Vans for Women. . . 

‘'Let’s not go to Winthorpe-Sutbury,” said 
Madeleine. 

(The first word of sense Bealby had heard.) 

“Ah!” said Mrs. Bowles archly, “who knows 
but what there’ll be a Man for you? Some 
sort of Man anyhow.” 

(Bealby thought that a most improper remark.) 

“I want no man.” 

“Ah!” 

“Why do you say Ah like that?” 

“Because I mean Ah like that.” 

“Meaning?” 

“Just that.” 

Miss Philips eyed Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Bowles 
eyed Miss Philips. 

“Judy,” she said, “you’ve got something up 
your sleeve.” 

“Where it’s perfectly comfortable,” said Mrs. 
Bowles. 

And then quite maddeningly, she remarked, 
“Will you be after washing up presently, Dick?” 
and looked at him with a roguish quiet over her 
cigarette. It was necessary to disabuse her 
mind at once of the idea that he had been listen- 


104 


BEALBY 


ing. He took up tlie last few plates and went 
off to the washing place by the stream. All the 
rest of that conversation had to be lost. 

Except that as he came back for the Hudson^s 
soap he heard Miss Philips say, ^^Keep your old 
Men. Iffl just console myself with Dick, my 
dears. Making such a Mystery 

To which Mrs. Bowles replied darkly, “She 
little knows. . . 

A kind of consolation was to be got from that. 
. . . But what was it she little knew? . . . 

§3 

The men-folk when they came were nothing 
so terrific to the sight as Bealby had expected. 
And thank Heaven there were only two of them 
and each assigned. Something he perceived was 
said about someone else, he couldnT quite catch 
what, but if there was to have been someone 
else, at any rate there now wasnT. Professor 
Bowles was animated and Mr. Geedge was grace- 
fully cold, they kissed their wives but not offen- 
sively, and there was a chattering pause while 
Bealby walked on beside the caravan. They 
were on the bare road that runs along the high 
ridge above Winthorpe-Sutbury, and the men 
had walked to meet them from some hotel or 
other — Bealby wasnT clear about that — by 
the golf links. Judy was the life and soul of the 
encounter, and all for asking the men what they 
meant by intruding upon three independent 
women who, sure-alive, could very well do with- 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


105 


out them. Professor Bowles took her pretty 
calmly, and seemed on the whole to admire her. 

Professor Bowles was a compact little man 
wearing spectacles with alternative glasses, partly 
curved, partly flat ; he was hairy and dressed in 
that sort of soft tweedy stuff that ravels out — 
he seemed to have been sitting among thorns — 
and baggy knickerbockers with straps and very 
thick stockings and very sensible, open-air, in 
fact quite mountainous, boots. And yet though 
he was short and stout and active he had a kind 
of authority about him, and it was clear that for 
all her persuasiveness his wife merely ran over 
him like a creeper without making any great 
difference to him. “IVe found,^^ he said, ^Hhe 
perfect place for your encampment.’^ She had 
been making suggestions. And presently he left 
the ladies and came hurrying after the caravan to 
take control. 

He was evidently a very controlling person. 

^^Here, you get down,” he said to William. 
^^That poor beast’s got enough to pull without 
youJ^ 

And when William mumbled he said, ^^Hey?” 
in such a shout that William for ever after held 
his peace. 

Where d’you come from, you boy, you?” 
he asked suddenly, and Bealby looked to Mrs. 
Bowles to explain. 

Great silly collar you’ve got,” said the Pro- 
fessor, interrupting her reply. ^^Boy like this 
ought to wear a wool shirt. Dirty too. Take it 
off, boy. It’s choking you. Don’t you feel it?” 


106 


BEALBY 


Then he went on to make trouble about the 
tackle William had rigged to contain the white 
horse. 

^'This harness makes me sick/’ said Professor 
Bowles. It’s worse than Italy. ...” 

“Ah!” he cried and suddenly darted off across 
the turf, going inelegantly and very rapidly, 
with peculiar motions of the head and neck as 
he brought first the flat and then the curved 
surface of his glasses into play. Finally he 
dived into the turf, remained scrabbling on all 
fours for a moment or so, became almost still 
for the fraction of a minute and then got up and 
returned to his wife, holding in an exquisite man- 
ner something that struggled between his finger 
and his thumb. 

“That’s the third to-day,” he said, trium- 
phantly. “They swarm here. It’s a migration.” 

Then he resumed his penetrating criticism of 
the caravan outfit. 

“That boy,” he said suddenly with his glasses 
oblique, “hasn’t taken off his collar yet.” 

Bealby revealed the modest secrets of his neck 
and pocketed the collar. . . . 

Mr. Geedge did not appear to observe Bealby. 
He was a man of the super-aquiline type with a 
nose like a rudder, he held his face as if it was 
a hatchet in a procession, and walked with the 
dignity of a man of honour. You could see at 
once he was a man of honour. Inflexibly, invin- 
cibly, he was a man of honour. You felt that 
anywhen, in a fire, in an earthquake, in a railway 
accident when other people would be running 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


107 


about and doing things he would have remained — 
a man of honour. It was his pride rather than 
his vanity to be mistaken for Sir Edward Grey. 
He now walked along with Miss Philips and his 
wife behind the disputing Bowleses, and dis- 
coursed in deep sonorous tones about the healthi- 
ness of healthy places and the stifling feeling one 
had in towns when there was no air. 

§4 

The Professor was remarkably active when at 
last the point he had chosen for the encampment 
was reached. Bealby was told to ^Hook alive 
twice, and William was assigned to his genus and 
species; ^^The man^s an absolute idiot,’’ was the 
way the Professor put it. William just shot a 
glance at him over his nose. The place certainly 
commanded a wonderful view. It was a turfy 
bank protected from the north and south by 
bushes of yew and the beech-bordered edge of 
a chalk pit ; it was close beside the road, a road 
which went steeply down the hill into Winthorpe- 
Sutbury, wdth that intrepid decision peculiar to 
the hill-roads of the south of England. It looked 
indeed as though you could throw the rinse of your 
teacups into the Winthorpe-Sutbury street ; as 
if you could jump and impale yourself upon the 
church spire. The hills bellied out east and 
west and carried hangers, and then swept round 
to the west in a long level succession of projec- 
tions, a perspective that merged at last with the 
general horizon of hilly bluenesses, amidst which 


108 


BEALBY 


Professor Bowles insisted upon a ‘^sapphire 
glimpse^' of sea. ^^The Channel/’ said Profes- 
sor Bowles, as though that made it easier for 
them. Only Mr. Geedge refused to see even 
that mitigated version of the sea. There was 
something perhaps bluish and level, but he was 
evidently not going to admit it was sea until he 
had paddled in it and tested it in every way 
known to him. . . . 

'^Good Lord!” cried the Professor. What’s 
the man doing now?” 

William stopped the struggles and confidential 
discouragements he was bestowing upon the 
white horse and waited for a more definite re- 
proach. 

“Putting the caravan alongside to the sun! 
Do you think it will ever get cool again? And 
think of the blaze of the sunset — through the 
glass of that door!” 

William spluttered. “If I put’n tether way — 
goo runnin’ down t’hill like,” said William. 

“Imbecile!” cried the Professor. “Put some- 
thing under the wheels. Here!” He careered 
about and produced great grey fragments of a 
perished yew tree. “Now then,” he said. “ Head 
up hill.” 

William did his best. 

“Oh ! not like that ! Here, you!” 

Bealby assisted with obsequious enthusiasm. 

It was some time before the caravan was ad- 
justed to the complete satisfaction of the Professor. 
But at last it was done, and the end door gaped at 
the whole prospect of the Weald with the steps hang- 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


109 


ing out idiotically like a tongue. The hind wheels 
were stayed up very cleverly by lumps of chalk and 
chunks of yew, living and dead, and certainly the 
effect of it was altogether taller and better. And 
then the preparations for the midday cooking began. 
The Professor was full of acute ideas about camp- 
ing and cooking, and gave Bealby a lively but in- 
structive time. There was no stream handy, but 
William was sent off to the hotel to fetch a garden 
water-cart that the Professor with infinite fore- 
sight had arranged should be ready. 

The Geedges held aloof from these preparations, 
— they were unassuming people; Miss Philips 
concentrated her attention upon the Weald — 
it seemed to Bealby a little discontentedly — 
as if it was unworthy of her — and Mrs. Bowles 
hovered smoking cigarettes over her husband^s 
activities, acting great amusement. 

“You see it pleases me to get Himself busy,'’ 
she said. “You'll end a Camper yet, * Darlint, 
and us in the hotel." 

The Professor answered nothing, but seemed 
to plunge deeper into practicality. 

Under the urgency of Professor Bowles Bealby 
stumbled and broke a glass jar of marmalade 
over some fried potatoes, but otherwise did well 
as a cook's assistant. Once things were a little 
interrupted by the Professor going off to catch a 
cricket, but whether it was the right sort of 
cricket or not he failed to get it. And then with 
three loud reports — for a moment Bealby thought 
the mad butlers from Shonts were upon him with 
firearms — Captain Douglas arrived and got off 


no 


BEALBY 


his motor bicycle and left it by the roadside. 
His machine accounted for his delay, for those 
were the early days of motor bicycles. It also 
accounted for a black smudge under one of his 
bright little eyes. He was fair and flushed, 
dressed in oilskins and a helmet-shaped cap and 
great gauntlets that made him, in spite of the 
smudge, look strange and brave and handsome, 
like a Crusader — only that he was clad in oilskin 
and not steel, and his moustache was smaller than 
those Crusaders wore ; and when he came 
across the turf to the encampment Mrs. Bowles 
and Mrs. Geedge both set up a cry of ^^krAh!^^ 
and Miss Philips turned an accusing face upon 
those two ladies. Bealby knelt with a bunch of 
knives and forks in his hand, laying the cloth 
for lunch, and when he saw Captain Douglas 
approaching Miss Philips, he perceived clearly 
that that lady had already forgotten her lowly 
adorer, and his little heart was smitten with 
desolation. This man was arrayed like a chival- 
rous god, and how was a poor Bealby, whose very 
collar, his one little circlet of manhood, had been 
reft from him, how was he to compete with this 
tremendousness? In that hour the ambition for 
mechanism, the passion for leather and oilskin, 
was sown in Bealby^s heart. 

told you not to come near me for a month,^^ 
said Madeleine, but her face was radiant. 

These motor bicycles — very difficult to con- 
trol,^’ said Captain Douglas, and all the little 
golden-white hairs upon his sunlit cheek glittered 
in the sun. 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


111 


^'And besides/’ said Mrs. Bowles, 'Ht’s all 
nonsense.” 

The Professor was in a state of arrested ad- 
ministration ; the three others were frankly 
audience to a clearly understood scene. 

^^You ought to be in France.” 
not in France.” 

^^I sent you into exile for a month,” and she 
held out a hand for the captain to kiss. 

He kissed it. 

Someday, somewhere, it was written in the 
book of destiny Bealby should also kiss hands. 
It was a lovely thing to do. 

Month! It’s been years,” said the captain. 
Years and years.” 

^^Then you ought to have come back before,” 
she replied and the captain had no answer 
ready. . . . 

§5 

When William arrived with the water-cart, he 
brought also further proofs of the Professor’s 
organizing ability. He brought various bottles 
of wine, red Burgundy and sparkling hock, two 
bottles of cider, and peculiar and meritorious 
waters ; he brought tinned things for hors oeuvre; 
he brought some luscious pears. When he had 
a moment with Bealby behind the caravan he 
repeated thrice in tones of hopeless sorrow, 
They’ll eat um all. I knows they’ll eat um all.” 
And then plumbing a deeper deep of woe, ^^Ef 
they donH they’ll count um. Ode Goggles’ll bag 
um. . . . E’s a bagger j ’e is.” 


112 


BEALBY 


It was the brightest of luncheons that was 
eaten that day in the sunshine and spaciousness 
above Winthorpe-Sutbury. Everyone was gay, 
and even the love-torn Bealby, who might well 
have sunk into depression and lethargy, was 
galvanized into an activity that w’-as almost 
cheerful by flashes from the Professor^s glasses. 
They talked of this and that; Bealby hadnT 
much time to attend, though the laughter that 
followed various sallies from Judy Bowles was 
very tantahzing, and it had come to the pears 
before his attention wasn’t so much caught as 
felled by the word ^^Shonts.” ... It was as 
if the sky had suddenly changed to vermilion. 
All these people were talking of Shouts! . . . 

^^Went there,” said Captain Douglas, ^Tn 
perfect good faith. Wanted to fill up Lucy’s 
little party. One doesn’t go to Shonts nowadays 
for idle pleasure. And then — I get ordered out 
of the house, absolutely Told to Go.” 

(This man had been at Shonts !) 

‘^That was on Sunday morning?” said Mrs. 
Geedge. 

^^On Sunday morning,” said Mrs. Bowles 
suddenly, we were almost within sight of Shonts.” 

(This man had been at Shonts even at the 
time when Bealby was there !) 

Early on Sunday morning. Told to go. I 
was fairly flabbergasted. What the deuce is a 
man to do? Where’s he to go? Sunday? One 
doesn’t go to places, Sunday morning. There 
I’d been sleeping like a lamb all night and sud- 
denly in came Laxton and said, ^Look here, you 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


113 


know/ he said, ^ youVe got to oblige me and pack 
your bag and go. Now.’ ^Why?’ said I. ^Be- 
cause you’ve driven the Lord Chancellor stark 
staring mad ! ’ ” 

^^But how?” asked the Professor, almost an- 
grily, ^^how? I don’t see it. Why should he 
ask you to go?” 

don’t know!” cried Captain Douglas. 

'^Yes, but — I” said the Professor, protesting 
against the unreasonableness of mankind. 

^^I’d had a word or two with him in the train. 
Nothing to speak of. About occupying two 
corner seats — always strikes me as a cad’s 
trick — but on my honour I didn’t rub it in. And 
then he got it into his head we were laughing at 
him at dinner — we were a bit, but only the sort 
of thing one says about anyone — way he works 
his eyebrows and all that — and then he thought 
I was ragging him. ... I donH rag people. Got 
it so strongly he made a row that night. Said 
I’d made a ghost slap him on his back. Hang 
it ! — what can you say to a thing like that ? In 
my room all the time.” 

^^You suffer for the sins of your brother,” 
said Mrs. Bowles. 

Heavens I ” cried the captain, I never thought 
of that ! Perhaps he mistook me. ...” 

He reflected for a moment and continued his 
narrative. ^^Then in the night, you know, he 
heard noises.” 

'^They always do,” said the Professor nodding 
confirmation. 

^‘Couldn’t sleep.” 


114 


BEALBY 


“A sure sign/^ said the Professor. 

And finally he sallied out in the early morning, 
caught the butler in one of the secret passages — ” 

^^How did the butler get into the secret pas- 
sage?^’ 

Going round, I suppose. Part of his duties. 
. . . Anyhow he gave the poor beggar an awful 
doing — awful — brutal — black eye, — all that 
sort of thing; man much too respectful to hit 
back. Finally declared I^d been getting up a 
kind of rag, — squaring the servants to help and 
so forth. . . . Laxton, I fancy, half believed 
it. . . . Awkward thing, you know, having it 
said about that you ragged the Lord Chancellor. 
Makes a man seem a sort of mischievous idiot. 
Injures a man. Then going away, you see, 
seems a kind of admission. . . 

“^Vhy did you go?'' 

^^Lucy," said the captain compactly. “Hys- 
terics.’' 

“Shonts would have burst," he added, “if I 
hadn't gone." 

Madeleine was helpful. “But you'll have to 
do something further," she said. 

“What is one to do.^" squealed the captain. 

“The sooner you get the Lord Chancellor 
certified a lunatic," said the Professor soundly, 
“the better for your professional prospects." 

“He went on pretty bad after I'd gone." 

“You've heard?" 

“Two letters. I picked 'em up at Wheatley 
Post Office this morning. You know he hadn't 
done with that butler. Actually got out of his 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


115 


place and scruffed the poor devil at lunch. Shook 
him like a rat, she says. Said the man wasnT 
giving him anything to drink — nice story, eh? 
Anyhow he scruffed him until things got broken. 

had it all from Minnie Timbre — you 
know, used to be Minnie Flax.^^ He shot a pro- 
pitiating glance at Madeleine. ^^Used to be 
neighbours of ours, you know, in the old time. 
Half the people, she says, didnT know what was 
happening. Thought the butler was apoplectic 
and that old Moggeridge was helping him stand 
up. Taking off his collar. It was Laxton thought 
of saying it was a fit. Told everybody, she says. 
Had to tell ’em Something, I suppose. But she 
saw better and she thinks a good many others 
did. Laxton ran ’em both out of the room. 
Nice scene for Shonts, eh ? Thundering awkward 
for poor Lucy. Not the sort of thing the county 
expected. Has her both ways. Can’t go to a 
house where the Lord Chancellor goes mad. One 
alternative. Can’t go to a house where the 
butler has fits. That’s the other. See the di- 
lemma? . . .” 

^H’ve got a letter from Lucy, too. It’s here” 
— he struggled — ^^See? Eight sheets — pencil. 
No Joke for a man to read that. And she writes 
worse than any decent self-respecting illiterate 
woman has a right to do. Quivers. Like writing 
in a train. Can’t read half of it. But she^s got 
something about a boy on her mind. Mad about 
a boy. Have I taken away a boy ? They’ve lost 
a boy. Took him in my luggage, I suppose. 


116 


A 


BEALBY 


She^d better write to the Lord Chancellor. Likely 
as not he met him in some odd corner and flew at 
him. Smashed him to atoms. Dispersed him. 
Anyhow theyVe lost a boy.'^ 

He protested to the world. I can’t go hunt- 
ing lost boys for Lucy. I’ve done enough coming 
away as I did. . . .” 

Mrs. Bowles held out an arresting cigarette. 

^^What sort of boy was lost?” she asked, 
don’t know. Some little beast of a boy. 
I daresay she’d only imagined it. Whole thing 
been too much for her.” 

'^Read that over again/’ said Mrs. Bowles, 
about losing a boy. We’ve found one.” 

^^That little chap?” 

^^We found that boy” — she glanced over her 
shoulder, but Bealby was nowhere to be seen — 
^'on Sunday morning near Shonts. He strayed 
into us like a lost kitten.” 

'^But I thought you said you knew his father, 
Judy,” objected the Professor. 

Didn’t verify,” said Mrs. Bowles shortly, and 
then to Captain Douglas, ^^read over again what 
Lady Laxton says about him. ...” 

§6 

Captain Douglas struggled with the difficulties 
of his cousin’s handwriting. 

Everybody drew together over the fragments 
of the dessert with an eager curiosity, and 
helped to weigh Lady Laxton’s rather dishevelled 
phrases. . . . 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


117 


§7 

'^We^ll call the principal witness/’ said Mrs. 
Bowles at last, warming to the business. Dick ! ” 

^^Di-ick!” 

‘^Dick!^’ 

The Professor got up and strolled round behind 
the caravan. Then he returned. No boy there.” 

He heard ! ” said Mrs. Bowles in a large whisper 
and making round wonder-eyes. 

'‘She says,” said Douglas, "that the chances 
are he’s got into the secret passages. . . 

The Professor strolled out to the road and 
looked up it and then down upon the roofs of 
Winthorpe-Sutbury. "No,” he said. "He’s miz- 
zled.” 

"He’s only gone away for a bit,” said Mrs. 
Geedge. "He does sometimes after lunch. He’ll 
come back to wash up.” 

"He’s probably taking a snooze among the yew 
bushes before facing the labours of washing 
up,” said Mr^. Bowies. "He can^t have mizzled. 
You see — in there — He can’t by any chance 
have taken his luggage!” 

She got up and clambered — with a little 
difficulty because of its piled-up position, into the 
caravan. "It’s all right,” she called out of the 
door. "His little parsivel is still here.” 

Her head disappeared again. 

"I don’t think he’d go away like this,” said 
Madeleine. "After all, what is there for him to 
go to — even if he is Lady Laxton’s missing 
boy ” 


118 


BEALBY 


don^t believe he heard a word of it/* said 
Mrs. Geedge. . . . 

Mrs. Bowles reappeared, with a curious-looking 
brown-paper parcel in her hand. She descended 
carefully. She sat down by the fire and held the 
parcel on her knees. She regarded it and her 
companions waggishly and lit a fresh cigarette. 
“Our link with Dick,’^ she said, with the cigarette 
in her mouth. 

She felt the parcel, she poised the parcel, she 
looked at it more and more waggishly. “I 
wonder/^ she said. 

Her expression became so waggish that her 
husband knew she was committed to behaviour 
of the utmost ungentlemanliness. He had long 
ceased to attempt restraint in these moods. She 
put her head on one side and tore open the corner 
of the parcel just a little way. 

“A tin can,^’ she said in a stage whisper. 

She enlarged the opening. “Blades of grass,^' 
she said. 

The Professor tried to regard it humorously. 
“Even if you have ceased to be decent you can 
still be frank. ... I think, now, my dear, 
you might just straightforwardly undo the 
parcel.’^ 

She did. Twelve unsympathetic eyes surveyed 
the evidences of Bealby^s utter poverty. 

“He^s coming,’^ cried Madeleine suddenly. 

Judy repacked hastily, but it was a false alarm. 

“I said he’d mizzled,” said the Professor. 

“And without washing up !” wailed Madeleine, 
“I couldn’t have thought it of him. ...” 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


119 


§8 

But Bealby had not ^‘mizzled/’ although he 
was conspicuously not in evidence about the 
camp. There was neither sight nor sound of 
him for all the time they sat about the vestiges 
of their meal. They talked of him and of topics 
arising out of him, and whether the captain 
should telegraph to Lady Laxton, ^^Boy practi- 
cally found.^’ “I^d rather just find him,^^ said 
the captain, ^^and anyhow until we get hold of 
him we donT know it^s her particular boy.’’ 
Then they talked of washing-up and how detest- 
able it was. And suddenly the two husbands, 
seeing their advantage, renewed their proposals 
that the caravanners should put up at the golf- 
links hotel, and have baths and the comforts 
of civilization for a night or so — and anyhow 
walk thither for tea. And as William had now 
returned — he was sitting on the turf afar off 
smoking a nasty-looking short clay pipe — they 
rose up and departed. But Captain Douglas 
and Miss Philips for some reason did not go off 
exactly with the others, but strayed apart, stray- 
ing away more and more into a kind of soli- 
tude. . . . 

First the four married people and then the 
two lovers disappeared over the crest of the 
downs. . . . 

§9 

For a time, except for its distant sentinel, the 
caravan seemed absolutely deserted, and then a 
clump of bramble against the wall of the old 


120 


BEALBY 


chalk-pit became agitated and a small rueful 
disillusioned white-smeared little Bealby crept 
back into the visible universe again. His heart 
was very heavy. 

The time had come to go. 

And he did not want to go. He had loved the 
caravan. He had adored Madeleine. 

He would go, but he would go beautifully — 
touchingly. 

He would wash up before he went, he would 
make everything tidy, he would leave behind him 
a sense of irreparable loss. . . . 

With a mournful precision he set about this 
undertaking. If Mergleson could have seen, 
Mergleson would have been amazed. . . . 

He made everything look wonderfully tidy. ' 

Then in the place where she had sat, lying on 
her rug, he found her favourite book, a small 
volume of Swinburne’s poems very beautifully 
bound. Captain Douglas had given it to her. 

Bealby handled it with a kind of reverence. 
So luxurious it was, so unlike the books in Bealby ’s 
world, so altogether of her quality. . . . Strange 
forces prompted him. For a time he hesitated. 
Then decision came with a rush. He selected a 
page, drew the stump of a pencil from his pocket, 
wetted it very wet and, breathing hard, began to 
write that traditional message, Farewell. Re- 
member Art Bealby.” 

To this he made an original addition: 
washt up before I went.” 

Then he remembered that so far as this caravan 
went he was not Art Bealby at all. He renewed 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


121 


the wetness of his pencil and drew black lines 
athwart the name of '^Art Bealby^’ until it was 
quite unreadable; then across this again and 
pressing still deeper so that the subsequent 
pages re-echoed it he wrote these singular words 
'^Ed rightful Earl Shonts.” Then he was 
ashamed, and largely obliterated this by still 
more forcible strokes. Finally above it all plainly 
and nakedly he wrote ^^Dick Mal-travers. . . 

He put down the book with a sigh and stood 
up. 

Everything was beautifully in order. But 
could he not do something yet? There came 
to him the idea of wreathing the entire camping 
place with boughs of yew. It would look lovely 
— and significant. He set to work. At first he 
toiled zealously, but yew is tough to get and 
soon his hands were painful. He cast about for 
some easier way, and saw beneath the hind 
wheels of the caravan great green boughs — one 
particularly a splendid long branch. ... It 
seemed to him that it would be possible to with- 
draw this branch from the great heap of sticks 
and stones that stayed up the hind wheels of 
the caravan. It seemed to him that that was 
so. He was mistaken, but that was his idea. 

He set to work to do it. It was rather more 
difficult to manage than he had supposed ; there 
were unexpected ramifications, wider resistances. 
Indeed, the thing seemed rooted. 

Bealby was a resolute youngster at bottom. 

He warmed to his task. . . . He tugged 
harder and harder. . . . 


122 


BEALBY 


§10 

How various is the quality of humanity ! 

About Bealby there was ever an imaginative 
touch ; he was capable of romance, of gallantries, 
of devotion. William was of a grosser clay, 
slave of his appetites, a materialist. Such men 
as William drive one to believe in born inferiors, 
in the existence of a lower sort, in the natural 
inequality of men. 

While Bealby was busy at his little gentle task 
of reparation, a task foolish perhaps and not too 
ably conceived, but at any rate morally gracious, 
William had no thought in the world but the 
satisfaction of those appetites that the consensus 
of all mankind has definitely relegated to the 
lower category. And which Heaven has rele- 
gated to the lower regions of our frame. He 
came now slinking towards the vestiges of the 
caravanners’ picnic, and no one skilled in the 
interpretation of the human physiognomy could 
have failed to read the significance of the tongue 
tip that drifted over his thin oblique lips. He 
came so softly towards the encampment that 
Bealby did not note him. Partly William thought 
of remnants of food, but chiefly he was intent to 
drain the bottles. Bealby had stuck them all 
neatly in a row a little way up the hill. There 
was a cider bottle with some heel-taps of cider, 
William drank that ; then there was nearly half a 
bottle of hock and William drank that, then 
there were the drainings of the Burgundy and 
Apollinaris. It was all drink to William. 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


123 


And after he had drained each bottle William 
winked at the watching angels and licked his lips, 
and patted the lower centres of his being with a 
shameless base approval. Then fired by alcohol, 
robbed of his last vestiges of self-control, his 
thoughts turned to the delicious chocolates that 
were stored in a daintily beribboned box in the 
little drawers beneath the sleeping bunk of Miss 
Philips. There was a new brightness in his eye, 
a spot of pink in either cheek. With an expres- 
sion of the lowest cunning he reconnoitred Bealby. 

Bealby was busy about something at the back 
end of the caravan, tugging at something. 

With swift stealthy movements of an entirely 
graceless sort, William got up into the front of 
the caravan. 

Just for a moment he hesitated before going in. 
He craned his neck to look round the side at the 
unconscious Bealby, wrinkled the vast nose into 
an unpleasant grimace and then — a crouching 
figure of appetite — he crept inside. 

Here they were! He laid his hand in the 
drawer, halted listening. . . . 

What was that? . . . 

Suddenly the caravan swayed. He stumbled, 
and fear crept into his craven soul. The caravan 
lurched. It was moving. ... Its hind wheels 
came to the ground with a crash. . . . 

He took a step doorward and was pitched side- 
ways and thrown upon his knees. . . . Then he 
was hurled against the dresser and hit by a falling 
plate. A cup fell and smashed and the caravan 
seemed to leap and bound. . . . 


124 


BEALBY 


Tlirough the little window he had a glimpse of 
yew bushes hurrying upward. The caravan was 
going down hill. . . . 

Lummy said William, clutching at the 
bunks to hold himself upright. . . . 

“Ca-arnt be that drink said William, aspread 
and aghast. . . . 

He attempted the door. 

Crikey! Here! Hold in! My shin!^^ . . • 
^^^Tis thut Brasted Vool of a Boy !^^ 

said William. . . . - — . . . . 

■■■■■ 



§11 


The caravan party soon came to its decision. 
They would stay the night in the hotel. And so as 
soon as they had had some tea they decided to go 
back and make William bring the caravan and all 
the ladies^ things round to the hotel. With char- 
acteristic eagerness. Professor Bowles led the way. 

And so it was Professor Bowles who first saw 
the release of the caravan. He barked. One 
short sharp bark. ^^Whup!’’ he cried, and very 
quickly, ^^Whatstheboydoing?’’ 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


125 


Then quite a different style of noise, with the 
mouth open ^^Wha — hoop!^^ 

Then he set off running very fast down towards 
the caravan, waving his arms and shouting as 
he ran, Yaaps! You Idiot. Yaaps 
The others were less promptly active. 

Down the slope they saw Bealby, a little 
struggling active Bealby, tugging away at a yew 
branch until the caravan swayed with his efforts, 
and then — then there was a movement as though 
the thing tossed its head and reared, and a smash 
as the heap of stuff that stayed up its hind wheels 
collapsed. . . . 

It plunged like a horse with a dog at its heels, 
it lurched sideways, and then with an air of quiet 
deliberation started down the grass slope to the 
road and Winthorpe-Sutbury. . . . 

Professor Bowles sped in pursuit like the wind, 
and Mrs. Bowles after a gasping moment set off 
after her lord, her face round and resolute. Mr. 
Geedge followed at a more dignified pace, making 
the only really sound suggestion that was offered 
on the occasion. ^^Hue! Stop it!^’ cried Mr. 
Geedge, for all the world like his great prototype 
at the Balkan Conference. And then like a large 
languid pair of scissors he began to run. Mrs. 
Geedge after some indefinite moments decided 
to see the humour of it all, and followed after her 
lord, in a fluttering rush, emitting careful little 
musical giggles as she ran, giggles that she had 
learnt long ago from a beloved schoolfellow. 
Captain Douglas and Miss Philips were some way 
behind the others, and the situation had already 


126 


BEALBY 


developed considerably before they grasped what 
was happening. Then obeying the instincts of a 
soldier the captain came charging to support the 
others, and Miss Madeleine Philips after some 
wasted gestures realized that nobod}^ was looking 
at her, and sat down quietly on the turf until 
this paralyzing state of affairs should cease. 

The caravan remained the centre of interest. 

Without either indecent haste or any complete 
pause it pursued its way down the road towards the 
tranquil village below. Except for the rumbling of 
its wheels and an occasional concussion it made 
very little sound : once or twice there was a faint 
sound of breaking crockery from its interior and 
once the phantom of an angry yell, but that was all. 

There was an effect of discovered personality 
about the thing. This vehicle, which had hitherto 
been content to play a background part, a yellow 
patch amidst the scenery, was now revealing an 
individuality. It was purposeful and touched 
with a suggestion of playfulness, at once kindly 
and human; it had its thoughtful instants, its 
phases of quick decision, yet never once did it 
altogether lose a certain mellow dignity. There 
was nothing servile about it ; never for a moment, 
for example, did it betray its blind obedience to 
gravitation. It was rather as if it and gravitation 
were going hand in hand. It came out into the 
road, butted into the bank, swept round, medi- 
tated for a full second, and then shafts foremost 
headed downhill, going quietly faster and faster 
and swaying from bank to bank. The shafts 
went before it like arms held out. . . . 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


127 


It had a quality — as if it were a favourite 
elephant running to a beloved master from whom 
it had been over-long separated. Or a slightly 
intoxicated and altogether happy yellow guinea- 
pig making for some coveted food. . . . 

At a considerable distance followed Professor 
Bowles, a miracle of compact energy, running 
so fast that he seemed only to touch the ground 
at very rare intervals. . . . 

And then, dispersedly, in their order and 
according to their natures, the others. . . . 

There was fortunately very little on the road. 

There was a perambulator containing twins, 
whose little girl guardian was so fortunate as to 
be high up on the bank gathering blackberries. 

A ditcher, ditching. 

A hawker lost in thought. 

His cart, drawn by a poor little black screw of 
a pony and loaded with the cheap flawed crockery 
that is so popular among the poor. 

A dog asleep in the middle of the village street. 
. . . Amidst this choice of objects the caravan 
displayed a whimsical humanity. It reduced 
the children in the perambulator to tears, but 
passed. It might have reduced them to a sort 
of red-currant jelly. It lurched heavily towards 
the ditcher and spared him, it chased the hawker 
up the bank, it whipped off a wheel from the cart 
of crockery (which after an interval of astonish- 
ment fell like a vast objurgation) and then it 
directed its course with a grim intentness towards 
the dog. 

It just missed the dog. 


128 


BEALBY 


He woke up not a moment too soon. He fled 
with a yelp of dismay. 

And then the caravan careered on a dozen 
yards further, lost energy and — the only really 
undignified thing in its whole career — stood on 
its head in a wide wet ditch. It did this with 
just the slightest lapse into emphasis. There! 
It was as if it gave a grunt — and perhaps there 
was the faintest suggestion of William in that 
grunt — and then it became quite still. . . . 

For a time the caravan seemed finished and 
done. Its steps hung from its upper end like the 
tongue of a tired dog. Except for a few minute 
noises as though it was scratching itself inside, it 
was as inanimate as death itself. 

But up the hill road the twins were weeping, 
the hawker and the ditcher were saying raucous 
things, the hawkeFs pony had backed into the 
ditch and was taking ill-advised steps, for which 
it was afterwards to be sorry, amidst his stock- 
in-trade, and Professor Bowles, Mrs. Bowles, 
Mr. Geedge, Captain Douglas and Mrs. Geedge 
were running — running — one heard the various 
patter of their feet. 

And then came signs of life at the upward door 
of the caravan, a hand, an arm, an active investi- 
gating leg seeking a hold, a large nose, a small 
intent vicious eye ; in fact — William. 

William maddened. 

Professor Bowles had reached the caravan. 
With a startling agility he clambered up by the 
wheels and step and confronted the unfortunate 
driver. It was an occasion for mutual sympathy 


THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 


129 


rather than anger, but the Professor was hasty, 
efficient and unsympathetic with the lower classes, 
and William’s was an ill-regulated temperament. 

“You consummate ass!’^ began Professor 
Bowles. . . . 

When William heard Professor Bowles say 
this, incontinently he smote him in the face, and 
when Professor Bowles was smitten in the face 
he grappled instantly and very bravely and 
resolutely with William. 

For a moment they struggled fearfully, they 
seemed to be endowed instantaneously with 
innumerable legs, and then suddenly they fell 
through the door of the caravan into the interior, 
their limbs seemed to whirl for a wonderful 
instant and then they were swallowed up. . . . 

The smash was tremendous. You would not 
have thought there was nearly so much in the 
caravan still left to get broken. . . . 

A healing silence. . . . 

At length smothered noises of still inadequate 
adjustment within. . . . 

The village population in a state of scared de- 
light appeared at a score of points and con- 
verged upon the catastrophe. Sounds of renewed 
dissension between William and the Professor in- 
side the rearing yellow bulk, promised further in- 
terests and added an element of mystery to this 
manifest disaster. 

§ 12 

As Bealby, still grasping his great branch of 
yew, watched these events, a sense of human 


130 


BEALBY 


futility invaded his youthful mind. For the first 
time he realized the gulf between intention and 
result. He had meant so well. . . . 

He perceived it would be impossible to ex- 
plain. . . . 

The thought of even attempting to explain 
things to Professor Bowles was repellent to 
him. , . . 

He looked about him with round despairful 
eyes. He selected a direction which seemed to 
promise the maximum of concealment with the 
minimum of conversational possibility, and in 
that direction and without needless delay he 
set off, eager to turn over an entirely fresh page 
in his destiny as soon as possible. . . . 

To get away, the idea possessed all his being. 

From the crest of the downs a sweet voice 
floated after his retreating form and never over- 
took him. 

^^Di-ick!^^ 

§ 13 

Then presently Miss Philips arose to her feet, 
gathered her skirts in her hand and with her 
delicious chin raised and an expression of counte- 
nance that was almost businesslike, descended 
towards the gathering audience below. She wore 
wide-flowing skirts and came down the hill in 
Artemesian strides. 

It was high time that somebody looked at her. 


CHAPTER V 


THE SEEKING OP BEALBY 

§1 

On the same Monday evening that witnessed 
Bealby^s first experience of the theatre, Mr. 
Mergleson, the house steward of Shonts, walked 
slowly and thoughtfully across the corner of the 
park between the laundry and the gardens. His 
face was much recovered from the accidents of 
his collision with the Lord Chancellor, resort to 
raw meat in the kitchen had checked the de- 
velopment of his injuries, and only a few con- 
tusions in the side of his face were more than 
faintly traceable. And suffering had on the 
whole rather ennobled than depressed his bearing. 
He had a black eye, but it was not, he felt, a com- 
mon black eye. It came from high quarters 
and through no fault of Mr. Mergleson^s own. 
He carried it well. It was a fruit of duty rather 
than the outcome of wanton pleasure-seeking or 
misdirected passion. 

He found Mr. Darling in profound meditation 
over some peach trees against the wall. They 
were not doing so well as they ought to do and Mr. 
Darling was engaged in wondering why. 

^^Good evening, Mr. Darling,’^ said Mr. Mergle- 
son. 

13 ^ 


132 


BEALBY 


Mr. Darling ceased rather slowly to wonder 
and turned to his friend. ^^Good evening, Mr. 
Mergleson/^ he said. don^t quite like the 
look of these here peaches, hlowed if I do.’ ^ 

Mr. Mergleson glanced at the peaches, and then 
came to the matter that was nearest his heart. 

“You ’aven’t I suppose seen anything of your 
stepson these last two days, Mr. Darling?” 

“Naturally said Mr. Darling, putting 

his head on one side and regarding his inter- 
locutor. “Naturally not, — I’ve left that to 
you, Mr. Mergleson.” 

“Well, that’s what’s awkward,” said Mr. 
Mergleson, and then, with a forced easiness, “You 
see, I ain’t seen ’im either.” 

“No!” 

“No. I lost sight of ’im — ” Mr. Mergleson 
appeared to reflect — “late on Sattiday night.” 

“’Ow’s that, Mr. Mergleson?” 

Mr. Mergleson considered the difficulties of 
lucid explanation. “We missed ’im,” said Mr. 
Mergleson simply, regarding the well-weeded 
garden path with a calculating expression and then 
lifting his eyes to Mr. Darling’s with an air of 
great candour. “And we continue to miss him.” 

“TYeZL'” said Mr. Darling. “That’s rum.” 

“Yes,” said Mr. Mergleson. 

“It’s decidedly rum,” said Mr. Darling. 

“We thought ’e might be ’iding from ’is work. 
Or cut off ’ome.” 

“You didn’t send down to ask.” 

“We was too busy with the week-end people. 
On the ’ole we thought if ’e ’ad cut ’ome, on the 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


133 


^ole ’e wasn^t a very serious loss. ’E got in 
the way at times. . . . And there was one or 
two things ^appened — ... Now that they’re all 
gone and ’e ’asn’t turned up — Well, I came 
down, Mr. Darling, to arst you. \Wiere’s ’e 
gone?” 

ain’t come ’ere,” said Mr. Darling survey- 
ing the garden. 

“I ’arf expected ’e might and I ’arf expected 
’e mightn’t,” said Mr. Mergleson with the air 
of one who had anticipated Mr. Darling’s answer 
but hesitated to admit as much. 

The two gentlemen paused for some seconds 
and regarded each other searchingly. 

Where’s ’e got to?” said Mr. Darling. 

^^Well,” said Mr. Mergleson, putting his hands 
where the tails of his short jacket would have 
been if it hadn’t been short, and looking extraor- 
dinarily like a parrot in its more thoughtful 
moods, tell you the truth, Mr. Darling, 
I’ve ’ad a dream about ’im — and it worries me. 
I got a sort of ideer of ’im as being in one of them 
secret passages. ’Iding away. There was a 
guest, well, I say it with all respec’ but anyone 
might ’ave ’id from ’im. . . . S’morning soon 
as the week end ’ad cleared up and gone ’ome, 
me and Thomas went through them passages as 
well as we could. Not a trace of ’im. But I still 
got that ideer. ’E was a wriggling, climbing, — 
enterprising sort of boy.” 

^f l’ve checked ’im for it once or twice,” said 
Mr. Darling with the red light of fierce memories 
gleaming for a moment in his eyes. 


134 


BEALBY 


might even/^ said Air. Alergleson, “well, 
very likely ^ave got hmself jammed in one of 
them secret passages. . . .^^ 

“Jammed/^ repeated Mr. Darling. 

“Well — got hmself somewhere where ’e can^t 
get out. IVe ^eard tell there^s walled-up dun- 
geons. 

“They say/’ said Mr. Darling, “there’s under- 
ground passages to the Abbey ruins — three good 
mile away.” 

“Orkward,” said Mr. Mergleson. . . . 

“Drat ’is eyes!” said Mr. Darling, scratching 
his head. “ \%at does ’e mean by it ? ” 

“We can’t leave ’im there,” said Mr. Alergle- 
son. 

“I knowed a young devil once what crawled 
up a culvert,” said Mr. Darling. “’Is father 
’ad to dig ’im out like a fox. . . . Lord ! ’ow ’e 
walloped ’im for it.” 

“Mistake to ’ave a boy in so young,” said Mr. 
Mergleson. 

“It’s all very awkward,” said Mr. Darling, 
surveying every aspect of the case. “You see — . 
’Is mother sets a most estrordinary value on 
’im. Most estrordinary.” 

“I don’t know whether she oughtn’t to be told, 
said Mr. Mergleson. “I was thinking of that.” 

Mr. Darling was not the sort of man to meet 
trouble half-way. He shook his head at that. 
“Not yet, Mr. Mergleson. I don’t think yet. 
Not until everything’s been tried. I don’t think 
there’s any need to give her needless distress, — 
none whatever. If you don’t mind I think I’ll 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


135 


come up to-night — nineish say — and ^ave a 
talk to you and Thomas about it — a quiet 
talk. Best to begin with a quiet talk. It^s a 
dashed rum go, and me and you we got to think 
it out a bit.^^ 

“That’s what I think/’ said Mr. Mergleson 
with unconcealed relief at Mr. Darling’s friendli- 
ness. “That’s exactly the light, Mr. Darling, 
in which it appears to me. Because, you see 
— if ’e’s all right and in the ’ouse, why doesn’t 
’e come for ’is vittels?” 

§2 

In the pantry that evening the question of tell- 
ing someone was discussed further. It was dis- 
cussed over a number of glasses of Mr. Mergleson’s 
beer. For, following a sound tradition, Mr. 
Mergleson brewed at Shonts, and sometimes 
he brewed well and sometimes he brewed ill, and 
sometimes he brewed weak and sometimes he 
brewed strong, and there was no monotony in the 
cups at Shonts. This was sturdy stuff and suited 
Mr. Darling’s mood, and ever and again with an 
author’s natural weakness and an affectation of 
abstraction Mr. Mergleson took the jug out 
empty and brought it back foaming. 

Henry, the second footman, was disposed to a 
forced hopefulness so as not to spoil the evening, 
but Thomas was sympathetic and distressed. 
The red-haired youth made cigarettes with a little 
machine, licked them and offered them to the 
others, saying little, as became him. Etiquette 


136 


BEALBY 


deprived him of an uninvited beer, and Mr. 
Mergleson’s inattention completed what eti- 
quette began. 

can’t bear to think of the poor little beggar, 
stuck head foremost into some cobwebby cranny, 
blowed if I can,” said Thomas, getting help from 
the jug. 

^‘He was an interesting kid,” said Thomas in a 
tone that was frankly obituary. “He didn’t 
like his work, one could see that, but he was 
lively — and I tried to help him along all I could, 
when I wasn’t too busy myself.” 

“There was something sensitive about him,” 
said Thomas. 

Mr. Mergleson sat with his arms loosely thrown 
out over the table. 

“What we got to do is to tell someone,” he 
said, “I don’t see ’ow I can put off telling ’er 
ladyship — after to-morrow morning. And then 
— ’eaven ’elp us!” 

“’Course I got to tell my missis,” said Mr. 
Darling, and poured in a preoccupied way, some 
running over. 

“We’ll go through them passages again now 
before we go to bed,” said Mr. Mergleson, “far 
as we can. But there’s ’oles and chinks on’y 
a boy could get through.” 

“/ got to tell the missis,” said Mr. Darling. 
“That’s what’s worrying me. . . .” 

As the evening wore on there was a tendency on 
the part of Mr. Darling to make this the refrain 
of his discourse. He sought advice. “’Ow’d 
you tell the missis?” he asked Mr. Mergleson, 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


137 


and emptied a glass to control his impatience 
before Mr. Mergleson replied. 

shall tell ^er ladyship, just simply, the fact. 
I shall say, your ladyship, here’s my boy gone 
and we don’t know where. And as she arsts me 
questions so shall I give particulars.” 

Mr. Darling reflected and then shook his head 
slowly. 

^^’Ow’dyi^ tell the missis?” he asked Thomas. 

''Glad I haven’t got to,” said Thomas. "Poor- 
little beggar.” 

"Yes, but ’ow would you tell ’er?” Mr. Darling 
said, varying the accent very carefully. 

"I’d go to ’er and I’d pat her back and I’d say, 
'bear up,’ see, and when she asked what for, I’d 
Just tell her what for — gradual like.” 

"You don’t know the missis,” said Mr. Darling. 
"Henry, ’ow’d/ti tell ’er?” 

"Let ’er find out,” said Henry. "Wimmin 
do.” 

Mr. Darling reflected, and decided that too was 
unworkable. 

"’Ow’d you?” he asked with an air of despera- 
tion of the red-haired youth. 

The red-haired youth remained for a moment 
with his tongue extended, licking the gum of a 
cigarette paper, and his eyes on Mr. Darling. 
Then he finished the cigarette slowly, giving his 
mind very carefully to the question he had been 
honoured with. "I think,” he said, in a low 
serious voice, "I should say, just simply, Mary — 
or Susan — or whatever her name is.” 

"Tilda,” supplied Mr. Darling. 


138 


BEALBY 


Tilda/ I should say. ^The Lord gave and 
the Lord ^ath taken away. Tilda ! — ’e^s gone.’ 
Somethin^ like that.’^ 

The red-haired boy cleared his throat. He was 
rather touched by his own simple eloquence. 

Mr. Darling reflected on this with profound 
satisfaction for some moments. Then he broke 
out almost querulously, “Yes, but brast him! 
— whereas ^e gone?” 

“Anyhow,” said Mr. Darling,. “I ainT going 
to tell ^er, not till the morning. I ainT going to 
lose my night’s rest if I have lost my stepson. 
Nohow. Mr. Mergleson, I must say, I don’t 
think I ever ^ave tasted better beer. Never. 
It’s — it’s famous beer.” 

He had some more. . . . 

On his way back through the moonlight to the 
gardens Mr. Darling was still unsettled as to the 
exact way of breaking things to his wife. He had 
come out from the house a little ruffled because 
of Mr. Mergleson’s opposition to a rather good 
idea of his that he should go about the house 
and “holler for ’im a bit. He’d know my voice, 
you see. Ladyship wouldn’t mind. Very likely 
’sleep by now.” But the moonlight dispelled 
his irritation. 

How was he to tell his wife? He tried various 
methods to the listening moon. 

There was for example the off-hand newsy way. 
“You know tha’ boy yours?” Then a pause for 
the reply. Then, “’E’s toley dis’peared.” 

Only there are difflculties about the word 
totally. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


139 


Or the distressed impersonal manner. ^^Dre^fle 
thing happen^. Dre'fle thing. Tha^ poo’ lilF 
chap, Artie — toley dis’peared.” 

Totally again. 

Or the personal intimate note. ^'Dunno wha’ 
you’ll say t’me, Tilda, when you hear what- 
togottasay. Thur’ly bad news. Seems they los’ 
our Artie up there — clean los’ ’im. Can’t fine 
’im nowhere tall.” 

Or the authoritative kindly. Tilda — you 
go’ control yourself. Go’ show whad you made 
of. Our boy — ’e’s — hie — Zos’.” 

Then he addressed the park at large with a 
sudden despair. ^^Don’ care wha’ I say, she’ll 
blame it on to me. I know ’er!” 

After that the enormous pathos of the situation 
got hold of him. ^^Poor fill’ chap,” he said. 
‘‘Poor fill’ fell’,” and shed a few natural tears. 

“Loved ’im jessis mione son.” 

As the circumambient night made no reply he 
repeated the remark in a louder, almost domineer- 
ing tone. . . . 

He spent some time trying to climb the garden 
wall because the door did not seem to be in the 
usual place. (Have to enquire about that in the 
morning. Difficult to see everything is all right 
when one is so bereaved). But finally he came on 
the door round a comer. 

He told his wife merely that he intended to 
have a peaceful night, and took off his boots in 
a defiant and intermittent manner. 

The morning would be soon enough. 

She looked at him pretty hard, and he looked 


140 


BEALBY 


at her ever and again, but she never made a 
guess at it. 

Bed. 

§3 

So soon as the week-enders had dispersed and 
Sir Peter had gone off to London to attend to 
various matters affecting the peptonizing of milk 
and the distribution of baby soothers about the 
habitable globe, Lady Laxton went back to bed 
and remained in bed until midday on Tuesday. 
Nothing short of complete rest and the utmost 
kindness from her maid would, she felt, save her 
from a nervous breakdown of the most serious 
description. The festival had been stormy to 
the end. Sir Peter’s ill-advised attempts to 
deprive Lord Moggeridge of alcohol had led to a 
painful struggle at lunch, and this had been 
followed by a still more impleasant scene between 
host and guest in the afternoon. “This is an 
occasion for tact,” Sir Peter had said and had 
gone off to tackle the Lord Chancellor, leaving 
his wife to the direst, best founded apprehensions. 
For Sir Peter’s tact was a thing by itself, a mixture 
of misconception, recrimination and familiarity 
that was rarely well received. . . . 

She had had to explain to the Sunday dinner 
party that his lordship had been called away 
suddenly. “Something connected with the Great 
Seal,” Lady Laxton had whispered in a discreet 
mysterious whisper. One or two simple hearers 
were left with the persuasion that the Great Seal 
had been taken suddenly unwell — and probably 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


141 


in a slightly indelicate manner. Thomas had to 
paint Mergleson’s eye with grease-paint left over 
from some private theatricals. It had been a 
patched-up affair altogether, and before she retired 
to bed that night Lady Laxton had given way 
to her accumulated tensions and wept. 

There was no reason whatever why to wind up 
the day Sir Peter should have stayed in her room 
for an hour saying what he thought of Lord 
Moggeridge. She felt she knew quite well 
enough what he thought of Lord Moggeridge, 
and on these occasions he always used a number 
of words that she did her best to believe, as a 
delicately brought-up woman, were unfamiliar 
to her ears. . . . 

So on Monday, as soon as the guests had gone, 
she went to bed again and stayed there, trying as 
a good woman should to prevent herself thinking 
of what the neighbours could be thinking — and 
saying — of the whole affair, by studying a new 
and very circumstantial pamphlet by Bishop Fowle 
on social evils, turning over the moving illustra- 
tions of some recent antivivisection literature 
and re-reading the accounts in the morning papers 
of a colliery disaster in the north of England. 

To such women as Lady Laxton, brought up 
in an atmosphere of refinement that is almost 
colourless, and living a life troubled only by small 
social conflicts and the minor violence of Sir 
Peter, blameless to the point of complete un- 
eventfulness, and secure and comfortable to the 
point of tedium, there is something amounting 
to fascination in the wickedness and sufferings 


142 


BEALBY 


of more normally situated people, there is a real 
attraction and solace in the thought of pain and 
stress, and as her access to any other accounts of 
vice and suffering was restricted she kept herself 
closely in touch with the more explicit literature 
of the various movements for human moraliza- 
tion that distinguish our age, and responded 
eagerly and generously to such painful catas- 
trophes as enliven it. The counterfoils of her 
cheque book witnessed to her gratitude for these 
vicarious sensations. She figured herself to 
herself in her day dreams as a calm and white 
and shining intervention checking and reproving 
amusements of an undesirable nature, and earning 
the tearful blessings of the mangled bye-products 
of industrial enterprise. 

There is a curious craving for entire reality 
in the feminine composition, and there were times 
when in spite of these feasts of particulars, she 
wished she could come just a little nearer to the 
heady dreadfulnesses of life than simply writing 
a cheque against it. She would have hked to 
have actually seen the votaries of evil blench 
and repent before her contributions, to have, her- 
self, unstrapped and revived and pitied some 
doomed and chloroformed victim of the so- 
called “scientist,’^ to have herself participated in 
the stretcher and the hospital and humanity 
made marvellous by enlistment under the red- 
cross badge. But Sir Peter^s ideals of womanhood 
were higher than his language, and he would 
not let her soil her refinement with any vision of 
the pain and evil in the world. ^^Sort of woman 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


143 


they want up there is a Trained Nurse/’ he used 
to say when she broached the possibility of going 
to some famine or disaster. ^^You don’t want 
to go prying, old girl. . . .” 

She suffered, she felt, from repressed heroism. 
If ever she was to shine in disaster that disaster, 
she felt, must come to her, she might not go to 
meet it, and so you realize how deeply it stirred 
her, how it brightened her and uplifted her to 
learn from Mr. Mergleson’s halting statements 
that perhaps, that probably, that almost cer- 
tainly, a painful and tragical thing was happening 
even now within the walls of Shonts, that there 
was urgent necessity for action — if anguish was 
to be witnessed before it had ended, and life saved. 

She clasped her hands ; she surveyed her large 
servitor with agonized green-grey eyes. 

Something must be done at once,” she said. 

Ever)rthing possible must be done. Poor little 
Mite!” 

^^Of course, my lady, ’e may ’ave run away !” 

^^Oh no!” she cried, ^^he hasn’t run away. 
He hasn’t run away. How can you be so wicked, 
Mergleson. Of course he hasn’t run away. He’s 
there now. And it’s too dreadful.” 

She became suddenly very firm and masterful. 
The morning’s colliery tragedy inspired her 
imagination. 

“We must get pick-axes,” she said. “We 
must organize search parties. Not a moment is 
to be lost, Mergleson — not a moment. . . . Get 
the men in off the roads. Get everyone you 

can. . . 


144 


BEALBY 


And not a moment was lost. The road men 
were actually at work in Shonts before their 
proper dinner-hour was over. 

They did quite a lot of things that afternoon. 
Every passage attainable from the dining-room 
opening was explored, and where these passages 
gave off chinks and crannies they were opened 
up with a vigour which Lady Laxton had greatly 
stimulated by an encouraging presence and 
liberal doses of whisky. Through their efforts a 
fine new opening was made into the library 
from the wall near the window, a hole big enough 
for a man to fall through, because one did, and a 
great piece of stonework was thrown down from 
the Queen Elizabeth tower, exposing the upper 
portion of the secret passage to the light of day. 
Lady Laxton herself and the head housemaid 
went round the panelling with a hammer and a 
chisel, and called out ^^Are you there and 
attempted an opening wherever it sounded hollow. 
The sweep was sent for to go up the old chimneys 
outside the present flues. Meanwhile Mr. Dar- 
ling had been set with several of his men to dig 
for, discover, pick up and lay open the under- 
ground passage or disused drain, whichever it was, 
that was known to run from the corner of the 
laundry towards the old ice-house, and that was 
supposed to reach to the abbey ruins. After 
some bold exploratory excavations this channel 
was located and a report sent at once to Lady 
Laxton. 

It was this and the new and alarming scar on 
the Queen Elizabeth tower that brought Mr. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


145 


Beaulieu Plummer post-haste from the estate 
office up to the house. Mr. Beaulieu Plummer 
was the Marquis of Cranberry^s estate agent, a 
man of great natural tact, and charged among 
other duties with the task of seeing that the 
Laxtons did not make away with Shonts during 
the period of their tenancy. He was a sound 
compact little man, rarely out of extremely riding 
breeches and gaiters, and he wore glasses, that now 
glittered with astonishment as he approached 
Lady Laxton and her band of spade workers. 

At his approach Mr. Darling attempted to 
become invisible, but he was unable to do so. 

^^Lady Laxton,’^ Mr. Beaulieu Plummer ap- 
pealed, ^^may I ask — 

^^Oh Mr. Beaulieu Plummer, I^m so glad 
you’ve come. A little boy — suffocating ! I 
can hardly hear it.” 

'^Suffocating!” cried Mr. Beaulieu Plummer, 
where?” and was in a confused manner told. 

He asked a number of questions that Lady 
Laxton found very tiresome. But how did she 
know the boy was in the secret passage? Of 
course she knew ; was it likely she would do all 
this if she didn’t know? But mightn’t he have 
run away? How could he when he was in the 
secret passages? But why not first scour the 
countryside ? By which time he would be 
smothered and starved and dead I . . . 

They parted with a mutual loss of esteem, and 
Mr. Beaulieu Plummer, looking very serious 
indeed, ran as fast as he could straight to the 
village telegraph-office. Or to be more exact, 

h 


146 


BEALBY 


he walked until he thought himself out of sight 
of Lady Laxton and then he took to his heels and 
ran. He sat for some time in the parlour post- 
office spoiling telegraph forms, and composing 
telegrams to Sir Peter Laxton and Lord Cran- 
berry. 

He got these off at last, and then drawn by an 
irresistible fascination went back to the park and 
watched from afar the signs of fresh activities 
on the part of Lady Laxton. 

He saw men coming from the direction of the 
stables with large rakes. With these they dragged 
the ornamental waters. 

Then a man with a pick-axe appeared against 
the skyline and crossed the roof in the direction 
of the clock tower, bound upon some unknown 
but probably highly destructive mission. 

Then he saw Lady Laxton going off to the 
gardens. She was going to console Mrs. Darling 
in her trouble. This she did through nearly an 
hour and a half. And on the whole it seemed 
well to Mr. Beaulieu Plummer that so she should 
be occupied. . . . 

It was striking five when a telegraph boy on a 
bicycle came up from the village with a telegram 
from Sir Peter Laxton. 

^^Stop all proceedings absolutely,’^ it said, 

until I get to you.” 

Lady Laxton’s lips tightened at the message. 
She was back from much weeping with Mrs. 
Darling and altogether finely strung. Here she 
felt was one of those supreme occasions when a 
woman must assert herself. ^^A matter of life 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


147 


or death/’ she wired in reply, and to show herself 
how completely she overrode such dictation as 
this she sent Mr. Mergleson down to the village 
public-house with orders to engage anyone he 
could find there for an evening’s work on an 
extraordinarily liberal overtime scale. 

After taking this step the spirit of Lady Laxton 
quailed. She went and sat in her own room and 
quivered. She quivered but she clenched her 
delicate fist. 

She would go through with it, come what might, 
she would go on with the excavation all night 
if necessary, but at the same time she began a 
little to regret that she had not taken earlier 
steps to demonstrate the improbability of Bealby 
having simply run away. She set to work to 
repair this omission. She wrote off to the 
Superintendent of Police in the neighbouring 
town, to the nearest police magistrate, and then 
on the off chance to various of her week-end 
guests, including Captain Douglas. If it was 
true that he had organized the annoyance of the 
Lord Chancellor (and though she still rejected 
that view she did now begin to regard it as a 
permissible hypothesis), then he might also know 
something about the mystery of this boy’s dis- 
appearance. 

Each letter she wrote she wrote with greater 
fatigue and haste than its predecessor and more 
illegibly. 

Sir Peter arrived long after dark. He cut across 
the corner of the park to save time, and fell into 
one of the trenches that Mr. Darling had opened. 


148 


BEALBY 


This added greatly to the eclat with which he came 
into the hall. 

Lady Laxton withstood him for five minutes 
and then returned abruptly to her bedroom and 
locked herself in, leaving the control of the opera- 
tions in his hands. . . . 

^^If he’s not in the house,” said Sir Peter, ^^all 
this is thunderin’ foolery, and if he’s in the house 
he’s dead. If he’s dead he’ll smell in a bit and 
then’ll be the time to look for him. Some- 
thin’ to go upon instead of all this blind hacking 
the place about. No wonder they’re threatenin’ 
proceedings. . . 

§4 

Upon Captain Douglas Lady Laxton’s letter 
was destined to have a very distracting effect. 
Because, as he came to think it over, as he came to 
put her partly illegible allusions to secret passages 
and a missing boy side by side with his memories 
of Lord Moggeridge’s accusations and the general 
mystery of his expulsion from Shonts, it became 
more and more evident to him that he had here 
something remarkably like a clue, something that 
might serve to lift the black suspicion of irrev- 
erence and levity from his military reputation. 
And he had already got to the point of suggesting 
to Miss Philips that he ought to follow up and 
secure Bealby forthwith, before ever they came 
over the hill crest to witness the disaster to the 
caravan. 

Captain Douglas, it must be understood, was 
a young man at war within himself. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY"' 


149 


He had been very nicely brought up, firstly 
in a charming English home, then in a preparatory 
school for selected young gentlemen, then in a 
good set at Eton, then at Sandhurst, where the 
internal trouble had begun to manifest itself. 
Afterwards the Bistershires. 

There were three main strands in the composi- 
tion of Captain Douglas. In the first place, and 
what was peculiarly his own quality, was the 
keenest interest in the why of things and the how 
of things and the general mechanism of things. 
He was fond of clocks, curious about engines, 
eager for science ; he had a quick brain and 
nimble hands. He read Jules Verne and liked 
to think about going to the stars and making fly- 
ing machines and submarines — in those days 
when everybody knew quite certainly that such 
things were impossible. His brain teemed with 
larval ideas that only needed air and light to 
become active full-fledged ideas. There he ex- 
celled most of us. In the next place, but this 
second strand was just a strand that most young 
men have, he had a natural keen interest in the 
other half of humanity, he thought them lovely, 
interesting, wonderful, and they filled him with 
warm curiosities and set his imagination cutting 
the prettiest capers. And in the third place, and 
there again he was ordinarily human, he wanted 
to be liked, admired, approved, well thought of. 

. . . And so constituted he had passed through 
the educational influence of that English home, 
that preparatory school, the good set at Eton, the 
Sandhurst discipline, the Bistershire mess. . . . 


150 


BEALBY 


Now the educational influence of the English 
home, the preparatory school, the good set at 
Eton and Sandhurst in those days — though 
Sandhurst has altered a little since — was all to 
develop that third chief strand of his being to 
the complete suppression of the others, to make 
him look well and unobtrusive, dress well and 
unobtrusively, behave well and unobtrusively, 
carry himself well, play games reasonably well, 
do nothing else well, and in the best possible form. 
And the two brothers Douglas, who were really 
very much alike, did honestly do their best to be 
such plain and simple gentlemen as our country 
demands, taking pretentious established things 
seriously, and not being odd or intelligent — in 
spite of those insurgent strands. 

But the strands were in them. Below the 
surface the disturbing impulses worked and at 
last forced their way out. . . . 

In one Captain Douglas, as Mrs. Rampound 
Pilby told the Lord Chancellor, the suppressed 
ingenuity broke out in disconcerting mystifications 
and practical jokes that led to a severance from 
Portsmouth, in the other the pent-up passions 
came out before the other ingredients in an un- 
controllable devotion to the obvious and challeng- 
ing femininity of Miss Madeleine Philips. . . . 
His training had made him proof against or- 
dinary women, deaf as it were to their charms, 
but she — she had penetrated. And impulsive 
forces that have been pent up — go with a bang 
when they go. . . . 

The first strand in the composition of Captain 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


151 


Douglas has still to be accounted for, the sinister 
strain of intelligence and inventiveness and 
lively curiosity. On that he had kept a warier 
hold. So far that had not been noted against 
him. He had his motor bicycle, it is true, at a 
time when motor bicycles were on the verge of 
the caddish ; to that extent a watchful eye might 
have found him suspicious ; that was all that 
showed. I wish I could add it was all that there 
was, but other things — other things were going 
on. Nobody knew about them. But they were 
going on more and more. 

He read books. 

Not decent fiction, not ofiicial biographies 
about other fellows^ fathers and all the old anec- 
dotes brought up to date and so on, but books 
with ideas, — you know, philosophy, social phi- 
losophy, scientific stuff, all that rot. The sort of 
stuff they read in mechanics^ institutes. 

He thought. He could have controlled it. 
But he did not attempt to control it. He tried 
to think. He knew perfectly well that it wasn’t 
good form, but a vicious attraction drew him on. 

He used to sit in his bedroom-study at Sand- 
hurst, with the door locked, and write down on a 
bit of paper what he really believed and why. 
He would cut all sorts of things to do this. He 
would question — things no properly trained 
English gentleman ever questions. 

And — he experimented. 

This you know was long before the French and 
American aviators. It was long before the com- 
ing of that emphatic lead from abroad without 


152 


BEALBY 


which no well-bred English mind permits itself 
to stir. In the darkest secrecy he used to make 
little models of cane and paper and elastic in 
the hope that somehow he would find out some- 
thing about flying. Flying — that dream ! He 
used to go off by himself to lonely places and climb 
up as high as he could and send these things 
fluttering earthward. He used to moon over 
them and muse about them. If anyone came 
upon him suddenly while he was doing these 
things, he would sit on his model, or pretend it 
didn^t belong to him, or clap it into his pocket, 
whichever was most convenient, and assume 
the vacuous expression of a well-bred gentleman 
at leisure — and so far nobody had caught him. 
But it was a dangerous practice. 

And finally, and this now is the worst and last 
thing to tell of his eccentricities, he was keenly 
interested in the science of his profession and in- 
tensely ambitious. 

He thought — though it wasn^t his business to 
think, the business of a junior officer is to obey 
and look a credit to his regiment — that the mili- 
tary science of the British army was not nearly so 
bright as it ought to be, and that if big trouble 
came there might be considerable scope for an 
inventive man who had done what he could to 
keep abreast with foreign work, and a consider- 
able weeding out of generals whose promotion had 
been determined entirely by their seniority, ami- 
ability and unruffled connubial felicity. He 
thought that the field artillery would be found 
out — there was no good in making a fuss about 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


153 


it beforeliand — that no end of neglected dodges 
would have to be picked up from the enemy, that 
the transport was feeble, and a health service — 
other than surgery and ambulance — an unknown 
idea, but he saw no remedy but experience. So 
he worked hard in secret ; he worked almost as 
hard as some confounded foreigner might have 
done; in the belief that after the first horrid 
smash-up there might be a chance to do things. 

Outwardly of course he was sedulously all right. 
But he could not quite hide the stir in his mind. 
It broke out upon his surface in a chattering 
activity of incompleted sentences which he tried to 
keep as decently silly as he could. He had done 
his utmost hitherto to escape the observation of the 
powers that were. His infatuation for Madeleine 
Philips had at any rate distracted censorious at- 
tention from these deeper infamies. . . . 

And now here was a crisis in his life. Through 
some idiotic entanglement manifestly connected 
with this missing boy, he had got tarred by his 
brother's brush and was under grave suspicion 
for liveliness and disrespect. 

The thing might be his professional ruin. 
And he loved the suppressed possibilities of his 
work beyond measure. 

It was a thing to make him absent-minded 
even in the company of Madeleine. 

§5 

Not only were the first and second strands in 
the composition of Captain Douglas in conflict 


154 


BEALBY 


with all his appearances and pretensions, but 
they were also in conflict with one another. 

He was full of that concealed resolve to do 
and serve and accomplish great things in the 
world. That was surely purpose enough to hide 
behind an easy-going unpretending gentlemanli- 
ness. But he was also tremendously attracted 
by Madeleine Philips, more particularly when 
she was not there. 

A beautiful woman may be the inspiration of 
a great career. This, however, he was beginning 
to find was not the case with himself. He had 
believed it at first and written as much and said 
as much, and said it very variously and gracefully. 
But becoming more and more distinctly clear to 
his intelligence was the fact that the very reverse 
was the case. Miss Madeleine Philips was making 
it very manifest to Captain Douglas that she 
herself was a career ; that a lover with any other 
career in view need not — as the advertisements 
say — apply. 

And the time she took up ! 

The distress of being with her ! 

And the distress of not being with her ! 

She was such a proud and lovely and entrancing 
and distressing being to remember, and such a 
vain and difficult thing to be with. 

She knew clearly that she was made for love, 
for she had made herself for love ; and she went 
through life like its empress with all mankind 
and numerous women at her feet. And she had 
an ideal of the lover who should win her which 
was like a oleographic copy of a Laszlo portrait of 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


155 


Douglas greatly magnified. He was to rise rapidly 
to great things, he was to be a conqueror and ad- 
ministriator, while attending exclusively to her. 
And incidentally she would gather desperate hom- 
age from all other men of mark, and these atten- 
tions would be an added glory to her love for him. 
At first Captain Douglas had been quite prepared 
to satisfy all these requirements. He had met her 
at Shorncliffe, for her people were quite good mili- 
tary people, and he had worshipped his way straight 
to her feet. He had made the most delightfully 
simple and delicate love to her. He had given up 
his secret vice of thinking for the writing of quite 
surprisingly clever love-letters, and the httle white 
paper models had ceased for a time to flutter in 
lonely places. 

And then the thought of his career returned to 
him, from a new aspect, as something he might 
lay at her feet. And once it had returned to him 
it remained with him. 

^^Some day,^’ he said, ^^and it may not be so 
very long, some of those scientific chaps will 
invent flying. Then the army will have to take 
it up, you know.’’ 

should love” she said, ^Ho soar through the 

air.” 

He talked one day of going on active service. 
How would it affect them if he had to do so? 
It was a necessary part of a soldier’s lot, 

^^But I should come too !” she said. should 
come with you.” 

'Ht might not be altogether convenient,” he 
said, for already he had learnt that Madeleine 


156 


BEALBY 


Philips usually travelled with quite a large number 
of trunks and considerable impressiveness. 

course/^ she said, ^^it would be splendid! 
How could I let you go alone. You would be the 
great general and I should be with you always.^’ 

^^Not always very comfortable,’^ he suggested. 

Silly boy! — I shouldn’t mind that! How 
little you know me ! Any hardship !” 

A woman — if she isn’t a nurse — ” 
should come dressed as a man. I would be 
your groom. . . .” 

He tried to think of her dressed as a man, but 
nothing on earth could get his imagination any 
further than a vision of her dressed as a Principal 
Boy. She was so delightfully and valiantly not 
virile; her hair would have flowed, her body 
would have moved, a richly fluent femininity — 
visible through any disguise. 

§ 6 

That was in the opening stage of the con- 
troversy between their careers. In those days 
they were both acutely in love with each other. 
Their friends thought the spectacle quite beautiful ; 
they went together so well. Admirers, fluttered 
with the pride of participation, asked them for 
week-ends together; those theatrical week-ends 
that begin on Sunday morning and end on Monday 
afternoon. She confided widely. 

And when at last there was something like a 
rupture it became the concern of a large circle of 
friends. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


157 


The particulars of the breach were differently 
stated. It would seem that looking ahead he had 
announced his intention of seeing the French army 
manoeuvres just when it seemed probable that 
she would be out of an engagement. 

‘‘But I ought to see what they are doing/' he 
said. “They're going to try those new diri- 
gibles." 

Then should she come? 

He wanted to whisk about. It wouldn't be 
any fun for her. They might get landed at night- 
fall in any old hole. And besides people would 
talk — Especially as it was in France. One 
could do unconventional things in England one 
couldn't in France. Atmosphere was different. 

For a time after that halting explanation she 
maintained a silence. Then she spoke in a voice 
of deep feeling. She perceived, she said, that 
he wanted his freedom. She would be the last 
person to hold a reluctant lover to her side. 
He might go — to any manoeuvres. He might 
go if he wished round the world. He might go 
away from her for ever. She would not detain 
him, cripple him, hamper a career she had once 
been assured she inspired. . . . 

The unfortunate man, torn between his love 
and his profession, protested that he hadn't 
meant that. 

Then what had he meant? 

He realized he had meant something remark- 
ably like it and he found great difficulty in ex- 
pressing these fine distinctions. . . . 

She banished him from her presence for a 


158 


BEALBY 


month, said he might go to his manoeuvres — 
with her blessing. As for herself, that was her 
own affair. Some day perhaps he might know 
more of the heart of a woman. . . . She choked 
back tears — very beautifully, and military 
science suddenly became a trivial matter. But 
she was firm. He wanted to go. He must go. 
For a month anyhow. 

He went sadly. . . . 

Into this opening breach rushed friends. It 
was the inestimable triumph of Judy Bowles to get 
there first. To begin with, Madeleine confided 
in her, and then, availing herself of the privilege 
of a distant cousinship, she commanded Douglas 
to tea in her Knightsbridge flat and had a good 
straight talk with him. She liked good straight 
talks with honest young men about their love 
affairs ; it was almost the only form of flirtation 
that the Professor, who was a fierce, tough, un- 
discriminating man upon the essentials of matri- 
mony, permitted her. And there was something 
peculiarly gratifying about Douglases complexion. 
Under her guidance he was induced to declare 
that he could not live without Madeleine, that her 
love was the heart of his life, without it he was 
nothing and with it he could conquer the world. 

. . . Judy permitted herself great protestations 
on behalf of Madeleine, and Douglas was worked 
up to the pitch of kissing her intervening hand. 
He had little silvery hairs, she saw, all over his 
temples. And he was such a simple perplexed dear. 
It was a rich deep beautiful afternoon for Judy. 

And then in a very obvious way Judy, who was 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


159 


already deeply in love with the idea of a caravan 
tour and the ^^wind on the heath’’ and the Gipsy 
life” and the ^^open road” and all the rest of it, 
worked this charming little love difficulty into 
her scheme, utilized her reluctant husband to 
arrange for the coming of Douglas, confided in 
Mrs. Geedge. . . . 

And Douglas went off with his perplexities. 
He gave up all thought of France, week-ended 
at Shonts instead, to his own grave injury, re- 
turned to London unexpectedly by a Sunday 
train, packed for France and started. He reached 
Rheims on Monday afternoon. And then the 
image of Madeleine, which always became more 
beautiful and mysterious and commanding with 
every mile he put between them, would not let 
him go on. He made unconvincing excuses to 
the Daily Excess military expert with whom he 
was to have seen things There’s a woman in it, 
my boy, and you’re a fool to go,” said the Daily 
Excess man, ^^but of course you’ll go, and I for 
one don’t blame you — ” He hurried back to 
London and was at Judy’s try sting-place even 
as Judy had anticipated. 

And when he saw Madeleine standing in the 
sunlight, pleased and proud and glorious, with a 
smile in her eyes and trembling on her lips, with 
a strand or so of her beautiful hair and a streamer 
or so of delightful blue fluttering in the wind about 
her gracious form, it seemed to him for the mo- 
ment that leaving the manoeuvres and coming 
back to England was quite a right and almost 
a magnificent thing to do. 


160 


BEALBY 


§7 

This meeting was no exception to their other 
meetings. 

The coming to her was a crescendo of poetical 
desire, the sight of her a climax, and then — an 
accumulation of irritations. He had thought 
being with her would be pure delight, and as 
they went over the down straying after the 
Bowles and the Geedges towards the Kedlake 
Hotel he already found himself rather urgently 
asking her to marry him and being annoyed by 
what he regarded as her evasiveness. 

He walked along with the restrained movement 
of a decent Englishman ; he seemed as it were to 
gesticulate only through his clenched teeth, and 
she floated beside him, in a wonderful blue dress 
that with a wonderful foresight she had planned 
for breezy uplands on the basis of Botticelli^s 
Primavera. He was urging her to marry him 
soon ; he needed her, he could not live in peace 
without her. It was not at all what he had 
come to say ; he could not recollect that he had 
come to say anything, but now that he was with 
her it was the only thing he could find to say to 
her. 

“But, my dearest boy,^’ she said, “how are 
we to marry? What is to become of your career 
and my career?’’ 

“I’ve left my career!” cried Captain Douglas 
with the first clear note of irritation in his voice. 

“Oh I don’t let us quarrel,” she cried. “Don’t 
let us talk of all those distant things. Let us be 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


161 


happy. Let us enjoy just this lovely day and 
the sunshine and the freshness and the beauty. 
. . . Because you know we are snatching these 
days. We have so few days together. Each — 
each must be a gem. . . . Look, dear, how the 
breeze sweeps through these tall dry stems that 
stick up everywhere — low broad ripples. 

She was a perfect work of art, abolishing time 
and obligations. 

For a time they walked in silence. Then 
Captain Douglas said, ^^All very well — beauty 
and all that — but a fellow likes to know where 
he is.^’ 

She did not answer immediately, and then she 
said, believe you are angry because you have 
come away from France.’’ 

^^Not a bit of it,” said the Captain stoutly. 
'^I’d come away from anywhere to be with you.” 
wonder,” she said. 

Well, — haven’t I?” 

wonder if you ever are with me. ... Oh ! 
— I know you want me. I know you desire me. 
But the real thing, the happiness, — love. What 
is anything to love — anything at all?” 

In this strain they continued until their foot- 
steps led them through the shelter of a group of 
beeches. And there the gallant captain sought 
expression in deeds. He kissed her hands, he 
sought her lips. She resisted softly. 

^^No,” she said, ^^only if you love me with all 
your heart.” 

Then suddenly, wonderfully, conqueringly she 
yielded him her lips. 

M 


162 


BEALBY 


she sighed presently, only yon 
understood/^ 

And leaving speech at that enigma she kissed 
again. . . . 

But you see now how difficult it was under 
these mystically loving conditions to introduce 
the idea of a prompt examination and dispatch 
of Bealby. Already these days were conse- 
crated. . . . 

And then you see Bealby vanished — going 
seaward. . . . 

Even the crash of the caravan disaster did little 
to change the atmosphere. In spite of a certain 
energetic quality in the Professor^s direction of 
the situation — he was a little embittered because 
his thumb was sprained and his knee bruised 
rather badly and he had a slight abrasion over one 
ear and William had bitten his calf — the general 
disposition was to treat the affair hilariously. 
Nobody seemed really hurt except William, — 
the Professor was not so much hurt as annoyed, — 
and William’s injuries though striking were all 
superficial, a sprained jaw and grazes and bruises 
and little things like that ; everybody was 
heartened up to the idea of damages to be paid 
for ; and neither the internal injuries to the 
caravan nor the hawker’s estimate of his stock- 
in-trade proved to be as great as one might 
reasonably have expected. Before sunset the 
caravan was safely housed in the Winthorpe- 
Sutbury public house, William had found a 
congenial corner in the bar parlour, where his 
account of an inside view of the catastrophe 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


163 


and his views upon Professor Bowles were much 
appreciated, the hawker had made a bit extra 
by carting all the luggage to the Bedlake Royal 
Hotel and the caravanners and their menfolk 
had loitered harmoniously back to this refuge. 
Madeleine had walked along the road beside 
Captain Douglas and his motor bicycle, which he 
had picked up at the now desolate encampment. 

^Ht only remains,^' she said, ^^for that thing 
to get broken.’^ 

^^But I may want it,^^ he said. 

she said, '^Heaven has poured us to- 
gether and now He has smashed the vessels. 
At least He has smashed one of the vessels. And 
look ! — like a great shield, there is the moon. 
It^s the Harvest Moon, isn’t it?” 

^^No,” said the Captain, with his poetry run- 
ning away with him. ^Ht’s the Lovers’ Moon.” 

^Ht’s like a benediction rising over our meet- 
ing.'’ 

And it was certainly far too much like a bene- 
diction for the Captain to talk about Bealby. 

That night was a perfect night for lovers, a 
night flooded with a kindly radiance, so that the 
warm mystery of the centre of life seemed to lurk 
in every shadow and hearts throbbed instead 
of beating and eyes were stars. After dinner 
every one found wraps and slipped out into the 
moonlight ; the Geedges vanished like moths ; 
the Professor made no secret that Judy was 
transfigured for him. Night works these miracles. 
The only other visitors there, a brace of couples, 
resorted to the boats upon the little lake. 


164 


BEALBY 


Two enormous waiters removing the coffee 
cups from the small tables upon the verandah 
heard Madeleine’s beautiful voice for a little while 
and then it was stilled. . . . 

§8 

The morning found Captain Douglas in a state 
of reaction. He was anxious to explain quite 
clearly to Madeleine just how necessary it was 
that he should go in search of Bealby forthwith. 
He was beginning to realize now just what a 
chance in the form of Bealby had slipped through 
his fingers. He had dropped Bealby and now the 
thing to do was to pick up Bealby again before 
he was altogether lost. Her professional life 
unfortunately had given Miss Philips the habit 
of never rising before midday, and the Captain 
had to pass the time as well as he could until 
the opportunity for his explanation came. 

A fellow couldn’t go off without an explana- 
tion. . . . 

He passed the time with Professor Bowles upon 
the golf links. 

The Professor was a first-rate player and an 
unselfish one ; he wanted all other players to be 
as good as himself. He would spare no pains to 
make them so. If he saw them committing any 
of the many errors into which golfers fall, he would 
tell them of it and tell them why it was an error 
and insist upon showing them just how to avoid it 
in future. He would point out any want of 
judgment, and not confine himself, as so many 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


165 


professional golf teachers do, merely to the stroke. 
After a time he found it necessary to hint to the 
Captain that nowadays a military man must 
accustom himself to self control. The Captain 
kept Pishing and Pushing, and presently, it was 
only too evident, swearing softly; his play got 
jerky, his strokes were forcible without any real 
strength, once he missed the globe altogether and 
several times he sliced badly. The eyes under 
his light eyelashes were wicked little things. 

He remembered that he had always detested golf. 

And the Professor. He had always detested 
the Professor. 

And his caddie ; at least he would have always 
detested his caddie if he had known him long 
enough. His caddie was one of those maddening 
boys with no expression at all. It didnT matter 
what he did or failed to do, there was the silly 
idiot with his stuffed face, unmoved. Really, of 
course overjoyed — but apparently unmoved. . . . 

^^Why did I play it that way?’^ the Captain 
repeated. ^^Oh! because I like to play it that 
way.^^ 

“TTeZZ,’’ said the Professor. ‘Ht isnT a recog- 
nized way anyhow. . . ” 

Then came a moment of evil pleasures. 

He’d sliced. Old Bowles had sliced. For 
once in a while he’d muffed something. Always 
teaching others and here he was slicing ! Why, 
sometimes the Captain didn’t slice ! . . . 

He’d get out of that neatly enough. Luck! 
He’d get the hole yet. What a bore it aU was ! 


166 


BEALBY 


\Yhj couldn’t Madeleine get up. at a decent 
hour to see a fellow? Why must she lie in bed 
when she wasn’t acting? If she had got up all 
this wouldn’t have happened. The shame of 
it ! Here he was, an able-bodied capable man in 
the prime of life and the morning of a day playing 
this blockhead’s game — ! 

Yes — blockhead’s game ! 

You play the like,” said the Professor. 

Rather said the Captain and addressed 
himself to his stroke. 

That’s not your ball,” said the Professor. 

‘^Similar position,” said the Captain. 

^^You know, you might win this hole,” said 
the Professor. 

^^Who cares?” said the Captain under his 
breath and putted extravagantly. 

^^That saves me,” said the Professor, and went 
down from a distance of twelve yards. 

The Captain, full of an irrational resentment, 
did his best to halve the hole and failed. 

'^You ought to put in a week at nothing but 
putting,” said the Professor. ^Ht would save 
you at least a stroke a hole. I’ve noticed that 
on almost every green, if I haven’t beaten you 
before I pull up in the putting.” 

The Captain pretended not to hear and said a 
lot of rococo things inside himself. 

It was Madeleine who had got him in for this 
game. A beautiful healthy girl ought to get up 
in the mornings. Mornings and beautiful healthy 
girls are all the same thing really. She ought 
to be dewy — positively dewy. . . . There she 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


167 


must be lying, warm and beautiful in bed — like 
Catherine the Great or somebody of that sort. 
No. It wasn^t right. All very luxurious and so 
on but not right. She ought to have understood 
that he was bound to fall a prey to the Professor 
if she didn’t get up. Golf! Here he was, neg- 
lecting his career ; hanging about on these beastly 
links, all the sound men away there in France — 
it didn’t do to think of it ! — and he was playing 
this retired tradesman’s consolation ! 

(Beastly the Professor’s legs looked from behind. 
The uglier a man’s legs are the better he plays 
golf. It’s almost a law.) 

That’s what it was, a retired tradesman’s 
consolation. A decent British soldier has no more 
business to be playing golf than he has to be 
dressing dolls. It’s a game at once worthless and 
exasperating. If a man isn’t perfectly fit he 
cannot play golf, and when he is perfectly fit he 
ought to be doing a man’s work in the world. 
If ever anything deserved the name of vice, 
if ever anything was pure, unforgivable dissipa- 
tion, surely golf was that thing. . . . 

And meanwhile that boy was getting more and 
more start. Anyone with a ha’porth of sense 
would have been up at five and after that brat — 
might have had him bagged and safe and back 
to lunch. Ass one was at times ! 

You’re here, sir,” said the caddie. 

The captain perceived he was in a nasty place, 
open green ahead but with some tumbled country 
near at hand and to the left, a rusty old gravel 
pit, furze at the sides, water at the bottom. 


168 


BEALBY 


Nasty attractive hole of a place. Sort of thing 
one gets into. He must pull himself together for 
this. After all, having undertaken to play a game 
one must play the game. If he hit the infernal 
thing, that is to say the ball, if he hit the ball 
so that if it didn’t go straight it would go to the 
right rather — clear of the hedge it wouldn’t 
be so bad to the right. Difficult to manage. 
Best thing was to think hard of the green ahead, a 
long way ahead, — with just the slightest deflection 
to the right. Now then, — heels well down, club 
up, a good swing, keep your eye on the ball, keep 
your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball 
just where you mean to hit it — far below there 
and a little to the right — and donH worry. . . . 

Rap. 

'Hn the pond I thinks sir.” 

The water would have splashed if it had gone 
in the pond,” said the Professor. ^'It must be 
over there in the wet sand. You hit it pretty 
hard, I thought.” 

Search. The caddie looked as though he didn’t 
care whether he found it or not. He ought to be 
interested. It was his profession, not just his 
game. But nowadays everybody had this horrid 
disposition towards slacking. A Tired generation 
we are. The world is too much with us. Too 
much to think about, too much to do, Made- 
leines, army manoeuvres, angry lawyers, lost 
boys — let alone such exhausting foolery as this 
game. . . 

^^Got it, sir !” said the caddie. 

Where?” 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


169 


^^Here, sir ! Up in the bush, sir 
It was resting in the branches of a bush two 
yards above the slippery bank. 

doubt if you can play it/^ said the Professor, 
^^but it will be interesting to try.’^ 

The Captain scrutinized the position. can 
play it,’^ he said. 

^^Youll slip, I^m afraid,^^ said the Professor. 
They were both right. Captain Douglas drove 
his feet into the steep slope of rusty sand below 
the bush, held his iron a little short and wiped 
the ball up and over and as he found afterwards 
out of the rough. All eyes followed the ball 
except his. The Professor made sounds of 
friendly encouragement. But the Captain was 
going — going. He was on all fours, he scrabbled 
handfuls of prickly gorse, of wet sand. His 
feet, his ankles, his calves slid into the pond. 
How much more? No. He’d reached the 
bottom. He proceeded to get out again as well 
as he could. Not so easy. The bottom of 
the pond sucked at him. . . . 

When at last he rejoined the other three his 
hands were sandy red, his knees were sandy red, 
his feet were of clay, but his face was like the 
face of a little child. Like the face of a little 
fair child after it has been boiled red in its bath 
and then dusted over with white powder. 
His ears were the colour of roses, Lancaster roses. 
And his eyes too had something of the angry 
wonder of a little child distressed. . . . 

was afraid you’d slip into the pond,” said 
the Professor. 


170 


BEALBY 


didn^t/^ said the Captain. 

(( f )y 

just got in to see how deep it was and cool 
my feet — I hate warm feet.’’ 

He lost that hole but he felt a better golfer now, 
his anger he thought was warming him up so that 
he would presently begin to make strokes by 
instinct, and do remarkable things unawares. 
After all there is something in the phrase getting 
one’s blood up.” If only the Professor wouldn’t 
dally so with his ball and let one’s blood get down 
again. Tap ! — the Professor’s ball went soaring. 
Now for it. The Captain addressed himself to 
his task, altered his plans rather hastily, smote 
and topped the ball. 

The least one could expect was a sympathetic 
silence. But the Professor thought fit to improve 
the occasion. 

^'You’ll never drive,” said the Professor; 
'^you’ll never drive with that irritable jerk in 
the middle of the stroke. You might just as 
well smack the ball without raising your club. 
If you think — ” 

The Captain lost his self-control altogether. 

^^Look here,” he said, ^^if you think that I 
care a single rap about how I hit the ball, if you 
think that I really want to win and do well at 
this beastly, silly, elderly, childish game — .” 

He paused on the verge of ungentlemanly 
language. 

'Hf a thing’s worth doing at all,” said the 
Professor after a pause for reflection, ^^it’s worth 
doing well.” 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


171 


“ Then it isn’t worth doing at all. As this hole 
gives you the game — if you don’t mind — ” 

The Captain’s hot moods were so rapid that 
already he was acutely ashamed of himself. 

^^0 certainly, if you wish it,” said the Professor. 

With a gesture the Professor indicated the 
altered situation to the respectful caddies and 
the two gentlemen turned their faces towards the 
hotel. 

For a time they walked side by side in silence, 
the caddies following with hushed expressions. 

Splendid weather for the French manceuvres,” 
said the Captain presently in an off-hand tone, 
'Hhat is to say if they are getting this weather.” 

^^At present there are a series of high pressure 
systems over the whole of Europe north of the 
Alps,” said the Professor. ^'It is as near set 
fair as Europe can be.” 

^^Fine weather for tramps and wanderers,” 
said the Captain after a further interval. 

There’s a drawback to everything,” said the 
Professor. ^^But it’s very lovely weather.” 

§9 

They got back to the hotel about half-past 
eleven and the Captain went and had an unpleas- 
ant time with one of the tyres of his motor 
bicycle which had got down in the night. In 
replacing the tyre he pinched the top of one of 
his fingers rather badly. Then he got the ordnance 
map of the district and sat at a green table in the 
open air in front of the hotel windows and specu- 


172 


BEALBY 


lated on the probable flight of Bealby. He had 
been last seen 'going south by east. That way 
lay the sea, and all boy fugitives go naturally for 
the sea. 

He tried to throw himself into the fugitive's 
mind and work out just exactly the course Bealby 
must take to the sea. 

For a time he found this quite an absorbing 
occupation. 

Bealby probably had no money or very little 
money. Therefore he would have to beg or 
steal. He wouldn’t go to the workhouse because 
he wouldn’t know about the workhouse, respect- 
able poor people never know anything about the 
workhouse, and the chances were he would be both 
too honest and too timid to steal. He’d beg. He’d 
beg at front doors because of dogs and things, 
and he’d probably go along a high road. He’d be 
more likely to beg from houses than from passers- 
by, because a door is at first glance less formidable 
than a pedestrian and more accustomed to being 
addressed. And he’d try isolated cottages rather 
than the village street doors, an isolated wayside 
cottage is so much more confidential. He’d ask for 
food — not money. All that seemed pretty sound. 

Now this road on the map — into it he was 
bound to fall and along it he would go begging. 
No other? . . . No. 

In the fine weather he’d sleep out. And he’d 
go — ten, twelve, fourteen — thirteen, thirteen 
miles a day. 

So now, he ought to be about here. And to- 
night, — here. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


173 


To-morrow at the same pace, — here. 

But suppose he got a lift ! . . . 

He’d only get a slow lift if he got one at all. 
It wouldn’t make much difference in the cal- 
culation. . . . 

So if to-morrow one started and went on to 
these cross roads marked Inn, just about twenty-six 
miles it must be by the scale, and beat round it 
one ought to get something in the way of tidings 
of Mr. Bealby. Was there any reason why 
Bealby shouldn’t go on south by east and sea- 
ward? . . . 

None. 

And now there remained nothing to do but to 
explain all this clearly to Madeleine. And why 
didn’t she come down? Why didn’t she come 
down? 

But when one got Bealby what would one do 
with him? 

Wring the truth out of him — half by threats 
and half by persuasion. Suppose after all he 
hadn’t any connexion with the upsetting of Lord 
Moggeridge? He had. Suppose he hadn’t. He 
had. He had. He had. 

And when one had the truth? 

Whisk the boy right up to London and con- 
front the Lord Chancellor with the facts. But 
suppose he wouldn’t be confronted with the facts. 
He was a touchy old sinner. . . . 

For a time Captain Douglas balked at this 
difficulty. Then suddenly there came into his head 
the tall figure, the long moustaches of that kindly 
popular figure, his adopted uncle Lord Chickney. 


174 


BEALBY 


Suppose he took the boy straight to Uncle Chick- 
ney, told him the whole story. Even the Lord 
Chancellor would scarcely refuse ten minutes to 
General Lord Chickney. . . . 

The clearer the plans of Captain Douglas grew 
the more anxious he became to put them before 
Madeleine — clearly and convincingly. . . . 

Because first he had to catch his boy. . . . 

Presently, as Captain Douglas fretted at the 
continued eclipse of Madeleine, his thumb went 
into his waistcoat pocket and found a piece of 
paper. He drew it out and looked at it. It was 
a little piece of stiff note-paper cut into the shape 
of a curved V rather after the fashion of a soaring 
bird. It must have been there for months. He 
looked at it. His care-wrinkled brow relaxed. 
He glanced over his shoulder at the house and 
then held this little scrap high over his head and 
let go. It descended with a slanting flight curving 
round to the left and then came about and swept 
down to the ground to the right. ... Now why 
did it go like that? As if it changed its mind. 
He tried it again. Same result. . . . Suppose 
the curvature of the wings was a little greater? 
Would it make a more acute or a less acute angle? 
He did not know. . . . Try it. 

He felt in his pocket for a piece of paper, found 
Lady Laxton’s letter, produced a stout pair of 
nail scissors in a sheath from a waistcoat pocket, 
selected a good clear sheet, and set himself to 
cut out his improved V. . . . 

As he did so his eyes were on V number one, 
on the ground. It would be interesting to see if 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


175 


this thing turned about to the left again. If in 
fact it would go on zig-zagging. It ought, he felt, 
to do so. But to test that one ought to release it 
from some higher point so as to give it a longer 
flight. Stand on the chair? . . . 

Not in front of the whole rotten hotel. And 
there was a beastly looking man in a green apron 
coming out of the house, — the sort of man who 
looks at you. He might come up and watch ; 
these fellows are equal to anything of that sort. 
Captain Douglas replaced his scissors and scraps 
in his pockets, leaned back with an affectation 
of boredom, got up, lit a cigarette — sort of 
thing the man in the green apron would think all 
right — and strolled off towards a clump of 
beech trees, beyond which were bushes and a de- 
pression. There perhaps one might be free from 
observation. Just try these things for a bit. 
That point about the angle was a curious one; 
it made one feel one^s ignorance not to know 
that. . . . 

§ 10 

The ideal King has a careworn look, he rules, 
he has to do things, but the ideal Queen is radiant 
happiness, tall and sweetly dignified, simply she 
has to be things. And when at last towards 
midday Queen Madeleine dispelled the clouds of 
the morning and came shining back into the 
world that waited outside her door, she was full 
of thankfulness for herself and for the empire 
that was given her. She knew she was a delicious 
and wonderful thing, she knew she was well done. 


176 


BEALBY 


her hands, the soft folds of her dress as she held 
it up, the sweep of her hair from her forehead 
pleased her, she hfted her chin but not too high 
for the almost unenvious homage in the eyes of 
the housemaid on the staircase. Her descent 
was well timed for the lunch gathering of the 
hotel guests; there was ^^Ah! — here she comes 
at last and there was her own particular court 
out upon the verandah before the entrance, 
Geedge and the Professor and Mrs. Bowles — 
and Mrs. Geedge coming across the lawn, — and 
the lover? 

She came on down and out into the sunshine. 
She betrayed no surprise. The others met her 
with flattering greetings that she returned smil- 
ingly. But the lover — ? 

He was not there ! 

It was as if the curtain had gone up on almost 
empty stalls. 

He ought to have been worked up and waiting 
tremendously. He ought to have spent the 
morning in writing a poem to her or in writing a 
delightful poetical love letter she could carry 
away and read or in wandering alone and thinking 
about her. He ought to be feeling now like the 
end of a vigil. He ought to be standing now, a 
little in the background and with that pleasant 
flush of his upon his face and that shy, subdued, 
reluctant look that was so infinitely more flattering 
than any boldness of admiration. And then she 
would go towards him, for she was a giving type, 
and hold out both hands to him, and he, as though 
he couldnT help it, in spite of all his British 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


177 


reserve, would take one and hesitate — which 
made it all the more marked — and kiss it. . . . 

Instead of which he was just not there. . . . 

No visible disappointment dashed her bravery. 
She knew that at the slightest flicker Judy and 
Mrs. Geedge would guess and that anyhow the 
men would guess nothing. ^^IVe rested/’ she 
said, ^^IVe rested delightfully. What have you 
all been doing?” 

Judy told of great conversations, Mr. Geedge 
had been looking for trout in the stream, Mrs. 
Geedge with a thin little smile said she had been 
making a few notes and — she added the word 
with deliberation — ^^observations,” and Profes- 
sor Bowles said he had had a round of golf 
with the Captain. ^'And he lost?” asked Made- 
leine. 

^^He’s careless in his drive and impatient at 
the greens,” said the Professor modestly. 

^^And then?” 

^^He vanished,” said the Professor, recognizing 
the true orientation of her interest. 

There was a little pause and Mrs. Geedge said, 
^'You know — ” and stopped short. 

Interrogative looks focussed upon her. 

“It’s so odd,” she said. 

Curiosity increased. 

“I suppose one ought not to say,” said Mrs. 
Geedge, “and yet — why shouldn’t one?” 

“ Exactly,” said Professor Bowles, and every one 
drew a little nearer to Mrs. Geedge. 

“One can’t help being amused,” she said. 
“It was so — extraordinary,” 

N 


178 


BEALBY 


“Is it something about the Captain asked 
Madeleine. 

“Yes. You see, — he didn’t see me.” 

“ Is he — is he writing poetry ? ” Madeleine was 
much entertained and relieved at the thought. 
That would account for everything. The poor 
dear ! He hadn’t been able to find some rhyme ! 

But one gathered from the mysterious airs of 
Mrs. Geedge that he was not writing poetry. 
“You see,” she said, “I was lying out there 
among the bushes, just jotting down a few little 
things, — and he came by. And he went down 
into the hollow out of sight. . . . And what do 
you think he is doing? You’d never guess? 
He’s been at it for twenty minutes.” 

They didn’t guess. 

“He’s playing with little bits of paper — Oh! 
like a kitten plays with dead leaves. He throws 
them up — and they flutter to the ground — and 
then he pounces on them.” 

“But — ” said Madeleine. And then very 
brightly, “let’s go and see!” 

She was amazed. She couldn’t understand. 
She hid it under a light playfulness, that threatened 
to become distraught. Even when presently, 
after a very careful stalking of the dell under the 
guidance of Mrs. Geedge, with the others in 
support, she came in sight of him, she still found 
him incredible. There was her lover, her de- 
voted lover, standing on the top bar of a fence, 
his legs wide apart and his body balanced with 
difficulty, and in his fingers poised high was a 
little scrap of paper. This was the man who 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


179 


should have been waiting in the hall with feverish 
anxiety. His fingers released the little model 
and down it went drifting. . . . 

He seemed to be thinking of nothing else in the 
world. She might never have been born ! . . . 

Some noise, some rustle, caught his ear. He 
turned his head quickly, guiltily, and saw her and 
her companions. 

And then he crowned her astonishment. No 
lovelight leapt to his eyes ; he uttered no cry of 
j oy. Instead he clutched wildly at the air, shouted, 
“Oh damn!” and came down with a complicated 
inelegance on all fours upon the ground. 

He was angry with her — angry ; she could 
see that he was extremely angry. 

§ 11 

So it was that the incompatibilities of man and 
woman arose again in the just recovering love 
dream of Madeleine Philips. But now the dis- 
cord was far more evident than it had been at 
the first breach. 

Suddenly her dear lover, her flatterer, her wor- 
shipper, had become a strange averted man. He 
scrabbled up two of his paper scraps before he 
came towards her, still with no lovelight in his 
eyes. He kissed her hand as if it was a matter of 
course and said almost immediately : “ I Ve been 
hoping for you all the endless morning. IVe had 
to amuse myself as best I can.^’ His tone was 
resentful. He spoke as if he had a claim upon 
her — upon her attentions. As if it wasnT en- 
tirely upon his side that obligations lay. 


180 


BEALBY 


She resolved that shouldn't deter her from 
being charming. 

And all through the lunch she was as charming 
as she could be, and under such treatment that 
rebellious ruffled quality vanished from his man- 
ner, vanished so completely that she could wonder 
if it had really been evident at any time. The 
alert servitor returned. 

She was only too pleased to forget the disap- 
pointment of her descent and forgive him, and it 
was with a puzzled incredulity that she presently 
saw his ^Mifflcult’^ expression returning. It was 
an odd little knitting of the brows, a faint absent- 
mindedness, a filming of the brightness of his 
worship. He was just perceptibly indifferent to 
the charmed and charming things he was saying. 

It seemed best to her to open the question 
herself. ^Hs there something on your mind, 
Dot?^^ 

^^Dot’^ was his old school nickname. 

“Well, no — not exactly on my mind. But — . 
It’s a bother of course. There’s that confounded 
boy ” 

“Were you trying some sort of divination 
about him? With those pieces of paper?” 

“No. That was different. That was — just 
something else. But you see that boy — . Prob- 
ably clear up the whole of the Moggeridge 
bother — and you know it is a bother. Might 
turn out beastly awkward. . . .” 

It was extraordinarily difficult to express. 
He wanted so much to stay with her and he 
wanted so much to go. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


181 


But all reason, all that was expressible, all 
that found vent in words and definite suggestions, 
was on the side of an immediate pursuit of Bealby. 
So that it seemed to her he wanted and intended 
to go much more definitely than he actually did. 

That divergence of purpose flawed a beautiful 
afternoon, cast chill shadows of silence over their 
talk, arrested endearments. She was irritated. 
About six o^clock she urged him to go ; she did not 
mind, anyhow she had things to see to, letters to 
write, and she left him with an effect of leaving 
him for ever. He went and overhauled his motor 
bicycle thoroughly and then an aching dread of 
separation from her arrested him. 

Dinner, the late June sunset and the moon 
seemed to bring them together again. Almost 
harmoniously he was able to suggest that he 
should get up very early the next morning, pursue 
and capture Bealby and return for lunch. 

^^You^d get up at dawn!^^ she cried. ^^But 
how perfectly Splendid the midsummer dawn 
must be.’’ 

Then she had an inspiration. Dot ! ” she 
cried, “I will get up at dawn also and come with 
you. . . . Yes, but as you say he cannot be 
more than thirteen miles away we’d catch him 
warm in his little bed somewhere. And the 
freshness! The dewy freshness!” 

And she laughed her beautiful laugh and said it 
would \>e ^^Such Fun!^’ entering as she supposed 
into his secret desires and making the most perfect 
of reconciliations. They were to have tea first, 
which she would prepare with the caravan lamp 


182 


BEALBY 


and kettle. Mrs. Geedge would hand it over 
to her. 

She broke into song. Hunting we will 
gO“Ooh/^ she sang. A Hunting we will go. . . ^ 

But she could not conquer the churlish under- 
side of the Captain^s nature even by such efforts. 
She threw a glamour of vigour and fun over the 
adventure, but some cold streak in his composi- 
tion was insisting all the time that as a boy hunt 
the attempt failed. Various little delays in her 
preparations prevented a start before half-past 
seven, he let that weigh with him, and when 
sometimes she clapped her hands and ran — and 
she ran like a deer, and sometimes she sang, he 
said something about going at an even pace. 

At a quarter past one Mrs. Geedge observed 
them returning. They were walking abreast and 
about six feet apart, they bore themselves grimly, 
after the manner of those who have delivered 
ultimata, and they conversed no more. . . . 

In the afternoon Madeleine kept her own 
room, exhausted, and Captain Douglas sought 
opportunities of speaking to her in vain. His 
face expressed distress and perplexity, with 
momentary lapses into wrathful resolution, and he 
evaded Judy and her leading questions and talked 
about the weather with Geedge. He declined a 
proposal of the Professor’s to go round the links, 
with especial reference to his neglected putting. 
^^You ought to, you know,” said the Professor. 

About half-past three, and without any publi- 
cation of his intention. Captain Douglas departed 
upon his motor bicycle. . . . 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


183 


Madeleine did not reappear until dinner-time, 
and then she was clad in lace and gaiety that 
impressed the naturally very good observation 
of Mrs. Geedge as unreal. 

§ 12 

The Captain, a confusion of motives that was 
as it were a mind returning to chaos, started. 
He had seen tears in her eyes. Just for one 
instant, but certainly they were tears. Tears of 
vexation. Or sorrow? (Which is the worse 
thing for a lover to arouse, grief or resentment?) 
But this boy must be caught, because if he was 
not caught a perpetually developing story of 
imbecile practical joking upon eminent and 
influential persons would eat like a cancer into 
the Captain^s career. And if his career was 
spoilt what sort of thing would he be as a lover? 
Not to mention that he might never get a chance 
then to try flying for military purposes. . . . 
So anyhow, anyhow, this boy must be caught. 
But quickly, for women^s hearts are tender, they 
will not stand exposure to hardship. There is 
a kind of unreasonableness natural to goddesses. 
Unhappily this was an expedition needing wari- 
ness, deliberation, and one brought to it a feverish 
hurry to get back. There must be self-control. 
There must be patience. Such occasions try the 
soldierly quality of a man. . . . 

It added nothing to the Captain^s self-control 
that after he had travelled ten miles he found he 
had forgotten his quite indispensable map and 


184 


BEALBY 


had to return for it. Then he was seized again 
with doubts about his inductions and went over 
them again, sitting by the roadside. (There 
must be patience.) . . . He went on at a pace 
of thirty-five miles an hour to the inn he had 
marked upon his map as Bealby^s limit for the 
second evening. It was a beastly little inn, it 
stewed tea for the Captain atrociously and it 
knew nothing of Bealby. In the adjacent cot- 
tages also they had never heard of Bealby. Cap- 
tain Douglas revised his deductions for the third 
time and came to the conclusion that he had not 
made a proper allowance for Wednesday after- 
noon. Then there was all Thursday, and the 
longer, lengthening part of Friday. He might 
have done thirty miles or more already. And 
he might have crossed this corner — inconspicu- 
ously. 

Suppose he hadn’t after all come along this 
road ! 

He had a momentary vision of Madeleine 
with eyes brightly tearful. ^^You left me for a 
Wild Goose Chase,” he fancied her saying. . . . 

One must stick to one’s job. A soldier more 
particularly must stick to his job. Consider 
Balaclava. . . . 

He decided to go on along this road and try 
the incidental cottages that his reasoning led him 
to suppose were the most likely places at which 
Bealby would ask for food. It was a business 
demanding patience and politeness. 

So a number of cottagers, for the greater part 
they were elderly women past the fiercer rush 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


185 


and hurry of life, grandmothers and ancient 
dames or wives at leisure with their children 
away at the Council schools, had a caller that 
afternoon. Cottages are such lonely places in 
the daytime that even district visitors and can- 
vassers are godsends and only tramps ill received. 
Captain Douglas ranked high in the scale of 
visitors. There was something about him, his 
fairness, a certain handsomeness, his quick colour, 
his active speech, which interested women at all 
times, and now an indefinable flow of romantic 
excitement conveyed itself to his interlocutors. 
He encountered the utmost civility everywhere ; 
doors at first tentatively ajar opened wider at 
the sight of him and there was a kindly disposition 
to enter into his troubles lengthily and deliber- 
ately. People listened attentively to his demands, 
and before they testified to Bealby’s sustained 
absence from their perception they would for the 
most part ask numerous questions in return. 
They wanted to hear the Captain^s story, the 
reason for his research, the relationship between 
himself and the boy, they wanted to feel some- 
thing of the sentiment of the thing. After that 
was the season for negative facts. Perhaps when 
everything was stated they might be able to 
conjure up what he wanted. He was asked in 
to have tea twice, for he looked not only pink and 
dusty, but dry, and one old lady said that years 
ago she had lost just such a boy as Bealby seemed 
to be — ^^Ah! not in the way you have lost 
him’^ — and she wept, poor old dear! and was 
only comforted after she had told the Captain 


186 


BEALBY 


three touching but extremely lengthy and de- 
tailed anecdotes of Bealby^s vanished prototype. 

(Fellow cannot rush away, you know; still all 
this sort of thing, accumulating, means a con- 
founded lot of delay.) 

And then there was a deaf old man. ... A 
very, very tiresome deaf old man who said at 
first he had seen Bealby. . . . 

After all the old fellow was deaf. . . . 

The sunset found the Captain on a breezy 
common forty miles away from the Bedlake 
Koyal Hotel and by this time he knew that fugi- 
tive boys cannot be trusted to follow the lines 
even of the soundest inductions. This business 
meant a search. 

Should he pelt back to Bedlake and start again 
more thoroughly on the morrow? 

A moment of temptation. 

If he did he knew she wouldnT let him go. 

No! 

NO! 

He must make a sweeping movement through 
the country to the left, trying up and down the 
roads that, roughly speaking, radiated from 
Bedlake between the twenty-fifth and the thirty- 
fifth milestone. ... 

It was night and high moonlight when at last 
the Captain reached Crayminster, that little old 
town decayed to a village, in the Crays valley. 
He was hungry, dispirited, quite unsuccessful, 
and here he resolved to eat and rest for the night. 

He would have a meal, for by this time he was 
ravenous, and then go and talk in the bar or the 
tap about Bealby. 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


187 


Until he had eaten he felt he could not endure 
the sound of his own voice repeating what had 
already become a tiresome stereotyped formula; 
^^You haven^t I suppose seen or heard anything 
during the last two days of a small boy — little 
chap of about thirteen — wandering about ? He^s 
a sturdy resolute little fellow with a high colour, 
short wiry hair, rather dark. ...” 

The White Hart at Crayminster, after some 
negotiations, produced mutton cutlets and Aus- 
tralian hock. As he sat at his meal in the small 
ambiguous respectable dining-room of the inn — 
adorned with framed and glazed beer advertise- 
ments, crinkled paper fringes and insincere sport- 
ing prints — he became aware of a murmurous 
confabulation going on in the bar parlour. It 
must certainly he felt be the bar parlour. . . . 

He could not hear distinctly, and yet it seemed 
to him that the conversational style of Cray- 
minster was abnormally rich in expletive. And 
the tone was odd. It had a steadfast quality of 
commination. 

He brushed off a crumb from his jacket, lit a 
cigarette and stepped across the passage to put 
his hopeless questions. 

The talk ceased abruptly at his appearance. 

It was one of those deep-toned bar parlours 
that are so infinitely more pleasant to the eye 
than the tawdry decorations of the genteel accom- 
modation. It was brown with a trimming of 
green paper hops and it had a mirror and glass 
shelves sustaining bottles and tankards. Six or 
seven individuals were sitting about the room. 


188 


BEALBY 


They had a numerous effect. There "was a man 
in very light floury tweeds, with a floury bloom 
on his face and hair and an anxious depressed 
expression. He was clearly a baker. He sat 
forward as though he nursed something precious 
under the table. Next him was a respectable- 
looking, regular-featured fair man with a large 
head, and a ruddy-faced butcher-like individual 
smoked a clay pipe by the side of the fireplace. 
A further individual with an alert intrusive look 
might have been a grocer^s assistant associating 
above himself. 

Evening,^’ said the Captain. 

Evening,” said the man with the large hand 
guardedly. 

The Captain came to the hearthrug with an 
affectation of ease. 

suppose,” he began, “that you havenT any 
of you seen anything of a small boy, wandering 
about. He^s a little chap about thirteen. Sturdy, 
resolute-looking little fellow with a high colour, 
short wiry hair, rather dark. . . .” 

He stopped short, arrested by the excited 
movements of the butcher’s pipe and by the 
changed expressions of the rest of the company. 

“We — we seen ’im,” the man with the big 
head managed to say at last. 

“We seen ’im all right,” said a voice out of the 
darkness beyond the range of the lamp. 

The baker with the melancholy expression 
interjected, “I don’t care if I don’t ever se© ’im 
again.” 

“Ah!” said the Captain, astonished to find 


THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 


189 


himself suddenly beyond hoping on a hot fresh 
scent. '‘Now all that’s very interesting. Where 
did you see him?” 

"Thunderin’ vicious little varmint,” said the 
butcher. "Owdacious.” 

"Mr. Benshaw,” said the voice from the shad- 
ows, " ’E’s arter ’im now with a shot gun loaded 
up wi’ oats. ’E’ll pepper ’im if ’e gets ’im, Bill 
will, you bet your ’at. And serve ’im jolly well 
right tew^ 

"I doubt,” said the baker, "I doubt if I’ll ever 
get my stummik — not thoroughly proper again. 
It’s a Blow I’ve ’ad. ’E give me a Blow. Oh ! 
Mr. ’Orrocks, could I trouble you for another 
thimbleful of brandy? Just a thimbleful neat. 
It eases the ache. ...” 


CHAPTER VI 


Bealby and the Tbamp 

§1 

Bealby was loth to leave the caravan party- 
even when by his own gross negligence it had 
ceased to be a caravan party. He made off 
regretfully along the crest of the hills through 
bushes of yew and box until the clamour of the 
disaster was no longer in his ears. Then he 
halted for a time and stood sorrowing and hsten- 
ing and then turned up by a fence along the 
border of a plantation and so came into a little 
overhung road. 

His ideas of his immediate future were vague 
in the extreme. He was a receptive expectation. 
Since his departure from the gardener^s cottage 
circumstances had handed him on. They had 
been interesting but unstable circumstances. He 
supposed they would still hand him on. So far 
as he had any definite view about his intentions 
it was that he was running away to sea. And 
that he was getting hungry. 

It was also, he presently discovered, getting 
dark very gently and steadily. And the over- 
hung road after some tortuosities expired sud- 
denly upon the bosom of a great grey empty 
common with distant mysterious hedges. 

190 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


191 


It seemed high time to Bealby that something 
happened of a comforting nature. 

Always hitherto something or someone had come 
to his help when the world grew dark and cold, 
and given him supper and put him or sent him to 
bed. Even when he had passed a night in the 
interstices of Shonts he had known there was a 
bed at quite a little distance under the stairs. 
If only that loud Voice hadn^t shouted curses 
whenever he moved he would have gone to it. 
But as he went across this common in the gloam- 
ing it became apparent that this amiable routine 
was to be broken. For the first time he realized 
the world could be a homeless world. 

And it had become very still. 

Disagreeably still, and full of ambiguous 
shadows. 

That common was not only an unsheltered 
place, he felt, but an unfriendly place, and he 
hurried to a gate at the further end. He kept 
glancing to the right and to the left. It would 
be pleasanter when he had got through that gate 
and shut it after him. 

In England there are no grey wolves. 

Yet at times one thinks of wolves, grey wolves, 
the colour of twilight and running noiselessly, 
almost noiselessly, at the side of their prey for 
quite a long time before they close in on it. 

In England, I say, there are no grey wolves. 

Wolves were extinguished in the reign of 
Edward the Third ; it was in the histories, and 
since then no free wolf has trod the soil of England ; 
only menagerie captives. 


192 


BEALBY 


Of course there may be escaped wolves ! 

Now the gate ! — sharp through it and slam 
it behind you, and a little brisk run and so into 
this plantation that slopes down hill. This is a 
sort of path ; vague, but it must be a path. Let 
us hope it is a path. 

What was that among the trees? 

It stopped, surely it stopped, as Bealby stopped. 
Pump, pump — . Of course ! that was one^s 
heart. 

Nothing there ! Just fancy. Wolves live in 
the open ; they do not come into woods like this. 
And besides, there are no wolves. And if one 
shouts — even if it is but a phantom voice one 
produces, they go away. They are cowardly 
things — really. Such as there aren^t. 

And there is the power of the human eye. 

Which is why they stalk you and watch you 
and evade you when you look and creep and 
creep and creep behind you ! 

Turn sharply. 

Nothing. 

How this stuff rustled under the feet ! In 
woods at twilight, with innumerable things dart- 
ing from trees and eyes watching you everywhere, 
it would be pleasanter if one could walk without 
making quite such a row. Presently, surely, 
Bealby told himself, he would come out on a 
high road and meet other people and say good- 
night^^ as they passed. Jolly other people they 
would be, answering, Good-night.’’ He was 
now going at a moistening trot. It was getting 
darker and he stumbled against things. 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


193 


When you tumble down wolves leap. Not of 
course that there are any wolves. 

It was stupid to keep thinking of wolves in 
this way. Think of something else. Think of 
things beginning with a B. Beautiful things, 
boys, beads, butterflies, bears. The mind stuck 
at bears. Are there such things as long grey bears? 
Ugh ! Almost endless, noiseless bears ? . . . 

It grew darker until at last the trees were 
black. The night was swallowing up the flying 
Bealby and he had a preposterous persuasion 
that it had teeth and would begin at the back of 
his legs. . . . 

§2 

cried Bealby weakly, hailing the glow 
of the Are out of the darkness of the woods above. 

The man by the fire peered at the sound ; he 
had been listening to the stumbling footsteps 
for some time, and he answered nothing. 

In another minute Bealby had struggled through 
the hedge into the visible world and stood regard- 
ing the man by the fire. The phantom wolves 
had fled beyond Sirius. But Bealby^s face was 
pale still from the terrors of the pursuit and 
altogether he looked a smallish sort of small 
boy. 

^^Lost?^’ said the man by the fire. 

^^CouldnT find my way,^' said Bealby. 

'^Anyone with you?^^ 

“No.’' 

The man reflected. “Tired?” 

“Bit.” 


194 


BEALBY 


“ Come and sit down by the fire and rest your- 
self. 

won^t ^urt you/^ he added as Bealby hesi- 
tated. 

So far in his limited experience Bealby had 
never seen a human countenance lit from behind 
by a flickering red flame. The effect he found 
remarkable rather than pleasing. It gave this 
stranger the most active and unstable counte- 
nance Bealby had ever seen. The nose seemed to 
be in active oscillation between pug and Roman, 
the eyes jumped out of black caves and then 
went back into them, the more permanent fea- 
tures appeared to be a vast triangle of neck and 
chin. The tramp would have impressed Bealby 
as altogether inhuman if it had not been for the 
smell of cooking he diffused. There were onions 
in it and turnips and pepper — mouth-watering 
constituents, testimonials to virtue. He was 
making a stew in an old can that he had slung 
on a cross stick over a brisk fire of twigs that he 
was constantly replenishing. 

wonT ’urt you, darn you,'^ he repeated. 
^^Come and sit down on these leaves here for a 
bit and tell me all abart it.^’ 

Bealby did as he was desired. “I got lost,^’ 
he said, feeling too exhausted to tell a good story. 

The tramp, examined more closely, became 
less pyrotechnic. He had a large loose mouth, a 
confused massive nose, much long fair hair, a 
broad chin with a promising beard and spots — a 
lot of spots. His eyes looked out of deep sockets 
and they were sharp little eyes. He was a lean 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


196 


man. His hands were large and long and they 
kept on with the feeding of the fire as he sat and 
talked to Bealby. Once or twice he leant forward 
and smelt the pot judiciously, but all the time 
the little eyes watched Bealby very closely. 

^^Lose yer collar?^’ said the tramp. 

Bealby felt for his collar. took it orf/^ he 
said. 

^^Come far?^^ 

^^Over there,’’ said Bealby. 

Where?” 

''Over there.” 

"What place?” 

"Don’t know the name of it.” 

"Then it ain’t your ’ome?” 

"No.” 

"You’ve run away,” said the man. 

"Pr’aps I ’ave,” said Bealby. 

"Pr’aps you ’ave! Why pr’aps? You ^ave! 
What’s the good of telling lies abart it ? When’d 
you start?” 

"Monday,” said Bealby. 

The tramp reflected. "Had abart enough of 
it?” 

"Dunno,” said Bealby truthfully. 

"Like some soup?” 

"Yes.” 

" ’Owmuch?” 

"I could do with a lot,” said Bealby. 

"Ah yah! I didn’t mean that. I meant, 
’ow much for some? ’Ow much will you pay for 
a nice, nice ’arf can of soup? I ain’t a darn 
charity. See?” 


196 


BEALBY 


'^Tuppence/’ said Bealby. 

The tramp shook his head slowly from side to 
side and took out the battered iron spoon he was 
using to stir the stuff and tasted the soup lus- 
ciously. It was — jolly good soup and there 
were potatoes in it. 

^^Thrippence/^ said Bealby. 

“ ^Ow much you got?^^ asked the tramp. 

Bealby hesitated perceptibly. Sixpence/' he 
said weakly. 

^^It's sixpence/' said the tramp. ^^Pay up." 

'Ow big a can?" asked Bealby. 

The tramp felt about in the darkness behind 
him and produced an empty can with a jagged 
mouth that had once contained, the label wit- 
nessed — I quote, I do not justify — ^Deep Sea 
Salmon^ ^^That," he said, ‘^and this chunk of 
bread. . . . Right enough?" 

^^You will do it?" said Bealby. 

^^Do I look a swindle?" cried the tramp, and 
suddenly a lump of the abundant hair fell over 
one eye in a singularly threatening manner. 
Bealby handed over the sixpence without further 
discussion. '^I'll treat you fairly, you see," said 
the tramp, after he had spat on and pocketed the 
sixpence, and he did as much. He decided that 
the soup was ready to be served and he served it 
with care. Bealby began at once. There's a 
nextry onion," said the tramp, throwing one over. 
'Ht didn't cost me much and I gives it you for 
nothin'. That's all right, eh? Here's 'ealth!" 

Bealby consumed his soup and bread meekly 
with one eye upon his host. He would, he decided, 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


197 


eat all he could and then sit a little while, and then 
get this tramp to tell him the way to — anywhere 
else. And the tramp wiped soup out of his can 
with gobbets of bread very earnestly and medi- 
tated sagely on Bealby. 

^^You better pal in with me, matey, for a bit,’^ 
he said at last. “You canT go nowhere else — 
not to-night.’’ 

“Couldn’t I walk perhaps to a town or sump- 
thing?” 

“These woods ain’t safe.” 

“’Ow d’you mean?” 

“Ever ’eard tell of a gurrillia? — sort of big 
black monkey thing.” 

“Yes,” said Bealby faintly. 

“There’s been one loose abart ’ere — oh week or 
more. Fact. And if you wasn’t a grown up 
man quite and going along in the dark, well — ’e 
might say something to you. ... Of course ’e 
wouldn’t do nothing where there was a fire or a 
man — but a little chap like you. I wouldn’t 
like to let you do it, ’strewth I wouldn’t. It’s 
risky. Course I don’t want to keep you. There 
it is. You go if you like. But I’d rather you 
didn’t. ’Onest.” 

“Where’d he come from?” asked Bealby. 

“M’nagery,” said the tramp. 

“ ’E very near bit through the fist of a chap 
that tried to stop ’im,” said the tramp. 

Bealby after weighing tramp and gorilla very 
carefully in his mind decided he wouldn’t and 
drew closer to the fire — but not too okrse — and 
the conversation deepened. 


198 


BEALBY 


§3 

It was a long and rambling conversation and 
the tramp displayed himself at times as quite an 
amiable person. It was a discourse varied by 
interrogations, and as a thread of departure and 
return it dealt with the life of the road and with 
life at large and — hf e, and with matters of ^ must ’ 
and ^ may. ’ 

Sometimes and more particularly at first Bealby 
felt as though a ferocious beast lurked in the 
tramp and peeped out through the fallen hank 
of hair and might leap out upon him, and some- 
times he felt the tramp was large and fine and 
gay and amusing, more particularly when he 
lifted his voice and his bristling chin. And ever 
and again the talker became a nasty creature and 
a disgusting creature, and his red-lit face was an 
ugly creeping approach that made Bealby recoil. 
And then again he was strong and wise. So the 
unstable needle of a boy’s moral compass spins. 

The tramp used strange terms. He spoke of 
the deputy’ and the ^doss-house,’ of the ^ spike’ 
and ^padding the hoof,’ of 'screevers’ and Harts’ 
and Hopper’s narks.’ To these words Bealby 
attached such meanings as he could, and so the 
things of which the tramp talked floated unsurely 
into his mind and again and again he had to read- 
just and revise his interpretations. And through 
these dim and fluctuating veils a new side of life 
dawned upon his consciousness, a side that was 
strange and lawless and dirty — in every way 
dirty — and dreadful and — attractive. That 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


199 


was the queer thing about it, that attraction. It 
had humour. For all its squalor and repulsive- 
ness it was lit by defiance and laughter, bitter 
laughter perhaps, but laughter. It had a gaiety 
that Mr. Mergleson for example did not possess, 
it had a penetration, like the penetrating quality 
of onions or acids or asafoetida, that made the 
memory of Mr. Darling insipid. 

The tramp assumed from the outset that Bealby 
had Mone something’ and run away, and some 
mysterious etiquette prevented his asking directly 
what was the nature of his offence. But he made 
a number of insidious soundings. And he as- 
sumed that Bealby was taking to the life of the 
road and that, until good cause to the contrary 
appeared, they were to remain together. ^^It’s 
a tough life,” he said, ^^but it has its points, and 
you got a toughish look about you.” 

He talked of roads and the quality of roads and 
countryside. This was a good countryside; it 
wasn’t overdone and there was no great hostility 
to wanderers and sleeping out. Some roads — 
the London to Brighton for example, if a chap 
struck a match, somebody came running. But 
here unless you went pulling the haystacks about 
too much they left you alone. And they weren’t 
such dead nuts on their pheasants, and one had a 
chance of an empty cowshed. ^Hf I’ve spotted a 
shed or anything with a roof to it I stay out,” 
said the tramp, ^^even if it’s raining cats and dogs. 
Otherwise it’s the doss-’ouse or the ^ spike.’ 
It’s the rain is the worst thing — getting wet. 
You haven’t been wet yet, not if you only started 


200 


BEALBY 


Monday. Wet — with a chilly wind to drive it. 
Gaw ! I been blown out of a holly hedge. You 
would think there’d be protection in a holly 
hedge. . . . 

^^Spike^s the last tiling/^ said the tramp, 
rather go bare-gutted to a doss-^ouse any- 
when. Gaw ! — youVe not ^ad your first taste 
of the spike yet.’^ 

But it wasn^t heaven in the doss-houses. He 
spoke of several of the landladies in strange 
but it would seem unflattering terms. ^^And 
there’s always such a blamed lot of washing going 
on in a doss-’ouse. Always washing they are ! 
One chap’s washing ’is socks and another’s wash- 
ing ’is shirt. Making a steam drying it. Dis- 
gustin’. Carn’t see what they want with it all. 
Barnd to git dirty again. ...” 

He discoursed of spikes, that is to say of work- 
houses, and of masters. ^^And then,” he said, 
with revolting yet alluring adjectives, ^Hhere’s 
the bath.” 

That’s the worst side of it,” said the tramp. 
. . . ‘^’Owever, it doesn’t always rain, and if it 
doesn’t rain, well, you can keep yourself dry.” 

He came back to the pleasanter aspects of 
the nomadic life. He was all for the outdoor 
style. Ain’t we comfortable ’ere?” he asked. 
He sketched out the simple larcenies that had con- 
tributed and given zest to the evening’s meal. 
But it seemed there were also doss-houses that 
had the agreeable side. Never been in one!” 
he said. ‘^But where you been sleeping since 
Monday?” 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


201 


Bealby described the caravan in phrases that 
seemed suddenly thin and anaemic to his ears, 

“You hit it lucky/ ^ said the tramp. “If a 
chap’s a kid he strikes all sorts of luck of that sort. 
Now ef I come up against three ladies travellin’ 
in a van — think they’d arst me in? Not it!” 

He dwelt with manifest envy on the situation 
and the possibilities of the situation for some 
time. “You ain’t dangerous,” he said; “that’s 
where you get in. . . 

He consoled himself by anecdotes of remark- 
able good fortunes of a kindred description. 
Apparently he sometimes travelled in the company 
of a lady named Izzy Berners — “a fair scorcher, 
been a regular, slap-up circus actress.” And 
there was also “good old Susan.” It was a little 
difficult for Bealby to see the point of some of 
these flashes by a tendency on the part of the 
tramp while his thoughts turned on these matters 
to adopt a staccato style of speech, punctuated by 
brief, darkly significant guffaws. There grew 
in the mind of Bealby a vision of the doss-house 
as a large crowded place, lit by a great central 
fire, with much cooking afoot and much jawing 
and disputing going on, and then “me and Izzy 
sailed in. . . .” 

The fire sank, the darkness of the woods seemed 
to creep nearer. The moonlight pierced the 
trees only in long beams that seemed to point 
steadfastly at unseen things, it made patches of 
ashen light that looked like watching faces. 
Under the tramp’s direction Bealby skirmished 
round and got sticks and fed the fire until the 


202 


BEALBY 


darkness and thoughts of a possible gorilla were 
driven back for some yards and the tramp pro- 
nounced the blaze a “fair treat/^ He had made a 
kind of bed of leaves which he now invited Bealby 
to extend and share, and lying feet to the fire 
he continued his discourse. 

He talked of stealing and cheating by various 
endearing names ; he made these enterprises seem 
adventurous and facetious; there was it seemed 
a peculiar sort of happy find one came upon 
called a “flat/^ that it was not only entertaining 
but obligatory to swindle. He made fraud seem 
so smart and bright at times that Bealby found it 
difficult to keep a firm grasp on the fact that it was 

— fraud. . . . 

Bealby lay upon the leaves close up to the prone 
body of the tramp, and his mind and his stand- 
ards became confused. The tramp^s body was a 
dark but protecting ridge on one side of him; 
he could not see the fire beyond his toes but its 
ffickerings'were reflected by the tree stems about 
them, and made perplexing sudden movements 
that at times caught his attention and made him 
raise his head to watch them. . . . Against 
the terrors of the night the tramp had become 
humanity, the species, the moral basis. His 
voice was full of consolation ; his topics made 
one forget the watchful silent circumambient. 
Bealby^s first distrusts faded. He began to 
think the tramp a fine, brotherly, generous 
fellow. He was also growing accustomed to a 
faint something — shall I call it an olfactory bar 

— that had hitherto kept them apart. The mono- 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


203 


logue ceased to devote itself to the elucidation of 
Bealby ; the tramp was lying on his back with his 
fingers interlaced beneath his head and talking 
not so much to his companion as to the stars and 
the universe at large. His theme was no longer 
the wandering life simply but the wandering life 
as he had led it, and the spiritedness with which 
he had led it and the real and admirable quality 
of himself. It was that soliloquy of consolation 
which is the secret preservative of innumerable lives. 

He wanted to make it perfectly clear that he 
was a tramp by choice. He also wanted to make 
it clear that he was a tramp and no better because 
of the wicked folly of those he had trusted and 
the evil devices of enemies. In the world that 
contained those figures of spirit, Isopel Berners 
and Susan, there was also it seemed a bad and 
spiritless person, the tramp^s wife, who had done 
him many passive injuries. It was clear she did 
not appreciate her blessings. She had been much 
to blame. Anybody’s opinion is better than 
’er ’usband’s,” said the tramp. Always ’as 
been.” Bealby had a sudden memory of Mr. 
Darling saying exactly the same thing of his 
mother. She’s the sort,” said the tramp, ^^what 
would rather go to a meetin’ than a music ’all. 
She’d rather drop a shilling down a crack than 
spend it on anything decent. If there was a choice 
of jobs going she’d ask which ’ad the lowest pay 
and the longest hours and she’d choose that 
She’d feel safer. She was born scared.. When 
there wasn’t anything else to do she’d stop at 
’ome and scrub the floors. Gaw ! it made a chap 


204 


BEALBY 


want to put the darn^ pail over ^er ^ed, so^s she^d 
get enough of it. . . . 

don’t hold with all this crawling through 
life and saying Please/^ said the tramp. ^‘1 say 
it’s my world just as much as it’s your world. 
You may have your ’orses and carriages, your 
’ouses and country places and all that and you 
may think Gawd sent me to run abart and work 
for you; but / don’t. See?” 

Bealby saw. 

“I seek my satisfactions just as you seek your 
satisfactions, and if you want to get me to work 
you’ve jolly well got to make me. I don’t choose 
to work. I choose to keep on my own and a bit 
loose and take my chance where I find it. You 
got to take your chances in this world. Some- 
times they come bad and sometimes they come 
good. And very often you can’t tell which it is 
when they ’ave come. . . .” 

Then he fell questioning Bealby again and then 
he talked of the immediate future. He was 
beating for the seaside. ^'Always something 
doing,” he said. ^‘You got to keep your eye on 
for cops; those seaside benches, they’re ’ot on 
tramps — give you a month for begging soon as 
look at you — but there’s flats dropping sixpences 
thick as flies on a sore ’orse. You want a there 
for all sorts of jobs. You’re just the chap for 
it, matey. Saw it soon’s ever I set eyes on 
you. . . 

He made projects. . . . 

Finally he became more personal and very 
flattering. 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


205 


'^Now you and me/' he said, suddenly shifting 
himself quite close to Bealby, we're going to be 
downright pals. I've took a liking to you. Me 
and you are going to pal together. See?" 

He breathed into Bealby's face, and laid a 
hand on his knee and squeezed it, and Bealby, on 
the whole, felt honoured by his protection. . . . 

§4 

In the unsympathetic light of a bright and 
pushful morning the tramp was shorn of much 
of his overnight glamour. It became manifest 
that he was not merely offensively unshaven, but 
extravagantly dirty. It was not ordinary rural 
dirt. During the last few days he must have had 
dealings of an intimate nature with coal. He 
was taciturn and irritable, he declared that this 
sleeping out would be the death of him and the 
breakfast was only too manifestly wanting in the 
comforts of a refined home. He seemed a little 
less embittered after breakfast, he became even 
faintly genial, but he remained unpleasing. A 
distaste for the tramp arose in Bealby's mind and 
as he walked on behind his guide and friend, he 
revolved schemes of unobtrusive detachment. 

Far be it from me to accuse Bealby of in- 
gratitude. But it is true that that same dis- 
inclination which made him a disloyal assistant 
to Mr. Mergleson was now affecting his comrade- 
ship with the tramp. And he was deceitful. • He 
allowed the tramp to build projects in the con- 
fidence of his continued adhesion, he did not warn 


206 


BEALBY 


him of the defection he meditated. But on the 
other hand Bealby had acquired from his mother 
an effective horror of stealing. And one must 
admit, since the tramp admitted it, that the man 
stole. 

And another little matter had at the same time 
estranged Bealby from the tramp and linked the 
two of them together. The attentive reader will 
know that Bealby had exactly two shillings and 
twopence-halfpenny when he came down out of 
the woods to the fireside. He had Mrs. Bowles’ 
half-crown and the balance of Madeleine Philips’ 
theatre shilling, minus sixpence-halfpenny for a 
collar and sixpence he had given the tramp for 
the soup overnight. But all this balance was now 
in the pocket of the tramp. Money talks and the 
tramp had heard it. He had not taken it away 
from Bealby, but he had obtained it in this 
manner: ^^We two are pals,” he said, ^^and one 
of us had better be Treasurer. That’s Me. I 
know the ropes better. So hand over what you 
got there, matey.” 

And after he had pointed out that a refusal 
might lead to Bealby’s evisceration the transfer 
occurred. Bealby was searched, kindly but 
firmly. . . . 

It seemed to the tramp that this trouble had 
now blown over completely. 

Little did he suspect the rebellious and treacher- 
ous thoughts that seethed in the head of his com- 
panion. Little did he suppose that his personal 
appearance, his manners, his ethical flavour — 
nay, even his physical fiavour — were being 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


207 


judged in a spirit entirely unamiable. It seemed 
to him that he had obtained youthful and sub- 
servient companionship, companionship that 
would be equally agreeable and useful; he had 
adopted a course that he imagined would cement 
the ties between them; he reckoned not with 
ingratitude. ^^If anyone arsts you who I am, 
call me uncle,^^ he said. He walked along, a 
little in advance, sticking his toes out right and 
left in a peculiar wide pace that characterized 
his walk, and revolving schemes for the happiness 
and profit of the day. To begin with — great 
draughts of beer. Then tobacco. Later perhaps 
a little bread and cheese for Bealby. “You 
can’t come in ’ere,” he said at the first public 
house. “You’re under age, me boy. It ain’t 
my doing, matey ; it’s ’Erbert Samuel. You 
blame ’im. ’E don’t objec’ to you going to work 
for any other Mr. Samuel there may ’appen to 
be abart or anything of that sort, that’s good for 
you, that is ; but ’e’s most particular you shouldn’t 
go into a public ’ouse. So you just wait abart 
outside ’ere. Fll ’ave my eye on you.” 

“You going to spend my money?” asked 
Bealby. 

“I’m going to ration the party,” said the 
tramp. 

“You — you got no right to spend my money,” 
said Bealby. 

“I — ^Ang it ! — I’ll get you some acid drops,” 
said the tramp in tones of remonstrance. “I 
tell you, blame you, — it’s ’Erbert Samuel.^ I 
can’t ’elp it ! I can’t fight against the lor.” 


208 


BEALBY 


You haven’t any right to spend my money,” 
said Bealby. 

‘‘Downt cut up crusty. ’Ow can I ’elp it?'’ 
tell a policeman. You gimme back my 
money and lemme go.” 

The tramp considered the social atmosphere. It 
did not contain a policeman. It contained nothing 
but a peaceful kindly corner public house, a sleep- 
ing dog and *the back of an elderly man digging. 

The tramp approached Bealby in a confidential 
manner. ^^’Oo’s going to believe you?” he 
said. ^^And besides, ’ow did you come by it? 

Moreover, I ain’t going to spend your 
money. I got money of my own. ^Ere! See?” 
And suddenly before the dazzled eyes of Bealby 
he held and inst^^ntly withdrew three shillings 
and two coppers that seemed familiar. He had 
had a shilling of his own. . . . 

Bealby waited outside. . . . 

The tramp emerged in a highly genial mood, 
with acid drops, and a short clay pipe going 
strong. ^^’Ere,” he said to Bealby with just the 
faintest flavour of magnificence over the teeth- 
held pipe and handed over not only the acid drops 
but a virgin short clay. ^^Fill/’ he said, proffer- 
ing the tobacco. ^Ht’s yours jus’ much as it’s 
mine. Be’r not let ’Erbert Samuel see you, 
though ; that’s all. ’E’s got a lor abart it.” 

Bealby held his pipe in his clenched hand. He 
had already smoked — once. He remembered it 
quite vividly still, although it had happened six 
months ago. Yet he hated not using that to- 
bacco. ^^No,” he said, ^H’ll smoke later.” 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


209 


The tramp replaced the screw of red Virginia 
in his pocket with the air of one who has done 
the gentlemanly thing. . . . 

They went on their way, an ill-assorted couple. 

All day Bealby chafed at the tie and saw the 
security in the tramp^s pocket vanish. They 
lunched on bread and cheese and then the tramp 
had a good sustaining drink of beer for both of 
them and after that they came to a common where 
it seemed agreeable to repose. And after a due 
meed of repose in a secluded hollow among the 
gorse the tramp produced a pack of exceedingly 
greasy cards and taught Bealby to play Euchre. 
Apparently the tramp had no distinctive pockets 
in his tail coat, the whole lining was one capacious 
pocket. Various knobs and bulges indicated his 
cooking tin, his feeding tin, a turnip and other 
unknown properties. At first they played for 
love and then they played for the balance in the 
tramp’s pocket. And by the time Bealby had 
learnt Euchre thoroughly, that balance belonged 
to the tramp. But he was very generous about it 
and said they would go on sharing just as they 
had done. And then he became confidential. 
He scratched about in the bagginess of his gar- 
ment and drew out a little dark blade of stuff, 
like a flint implement, regarded it gravely for a 
moment and held it out to Bealby. “Guess what 
this is.” 

Bealby gave it up. 

“Smell it.” 

It smelt very nasty. One familiar smell indeed 
there was with a paradoxical sanitary quality 


210 


BEALBY 


that he did not quite identify, but that was a 
mere basis for a complex reek of acquisitions. 
‘^What is it?^^ said Bealby. 

^^Soap!” 

“But what^s it for?^’ 

“I thought you^d arst that. . . . What^s 
soap usually for?^’ 

“Washing,’’ said Bealby guessing wildly. 

The tramp shook his head. “Making a foam,” 
he corrected. “That’s what I has my fits with. 
See? I shoves a bit in my mouth and down I 
goes and I rolls about. Making a sort of moaning 
sound. Why, I been given brandy often — neat 
brandy. ... It isn’t always a cert — nothing’s 
absolutely a cert. I’ve ’ad some let-downs. . . . 
Once I was bit by a nasty little dog — that brought 
me to pretty quick — and once I ’ad an old gentle- 
man go through my pockets. ^Poor chap !’ ’e ses, 
^very likely ’e’s destitoot, let’s see if ’e’s got 
anything.’ . . . I’d got all sorts of things, I 
didn’t want ’^m prying about. But I didn’t 
come-to sharp enough to stop ’im. Got me into 
trouble that did. . . . 

“It’s an old lay,” said the tramp, “but it’s 
astonishing ’ow it’ll go in a quiet village. Sort 
of amuses ’em. Or dropping suddenly in front of 
a bicycle party. Lot of them old tricks are the 
best tricks, and there ain’t many of ’em Billy 
Bridget don’t know. That’s where you’re lucky 
to ’ave met me, matey. Billy Bridget’s a ’ard 
man to starve. And I know the ropes. I know 
what you can do and what you can’t do. And 
I got a feeling for a policeman — same as some 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


211 


people ^ave for cats. I’d know if one was ’idden 
in the room. . . 

He expanded into anecdotes and the story of 
various encounters in which he shone. It was 
amusing and it took Bealby on his weak side. 
Wasn’t he the Champion Dodger of the Chelsome 
playground ? 

The tide of talk ebbed. Well,” said the tramp, 
'^time we was up and doing. ...” 

They went along shady lanes and across an 
open park and they skirted a breezy common 
from which they could see the sea. And among 
other things that the tramp said was this, ^^Time 
we began to forage a bit.” 

He turned his large observant nose to the right 
of him and the left. 

§5 

Throughout the afternoon the tramp discoursed 
upon the rights and wrongs of property, in a way 
that Bealby found very novel and unsettling. 
The tramp seemed to have his ideas about owning 
and stealing arranged quite differently from those 
of Bealby. Never before had Bealby thought it 
possible to have them arranged in any other than 
the way he knew. But the tramp contrived to 
make most possession seem unrighteous and 
honesty a code devised by those who have for 
those who haven’t. They’ve just got ’old of 
it,” he said. ^^They want to keep it to them- 
selves. . . . Do I look as though I’d stole much 
of anybody’s? It isn’t me got ’old of this land 
and sticking uP my notice boards to .ke§p eveiy- 


212 


BEALBY 


body off. It isn^t me spends my days and nights 
scheming ^ow I can get ’old of more and more 
of the stuff. . . . 

don’t envy it ’em/’ said the tramp. ^^Some 
’as one taste and some another. But when it 
comes to making all this fuss because a chap 
who isnH a schemer ’elps ’imself to a mathful, — 
well, it’s Rot. . . . 

^^It’s them makes the rules of the game and 
nobody ever arst me to play it. I don’t blame 
’em, mind you. Me and you might very well do 
the same. But brast me if I see where the sense 
of my keeping the rules comes in. This world 
ought to be a share out, Gawd meant it to be a 
share out. And me and you — we been done out 
of our share. That justifies us.” 

^^It isn’t right to steal,” said Bealby. 

'^It isn’t right to steal — certainly. It isn’t 
right — but it’s universal. Here’s a chap here over 
this fence, ask ’im where ’e got ’is land. Stealing ! 
What you call stealing, matey, I call restitootion. 
You ain’t probably never even ’eard of socialism.” 

^H’ve ’eard of socialists right enough. Don’t 
believe in Gawd and ’aven’t no morality.” 

Don’t you believe it. Why! — ’Arf the so- 
cialists are parsons. What I’m saying is socialism 
— practically. Fm a socialist. I know all abart 
socialism. There isn’t nothing you can tell me 
abart socialism. Why ! — for three weeks I was 
one of these here Anti-Socialist speakers. Paid 
for it. And I tell you there ain’t such a thing as 
property left; it’s all a blooming old pinch. 
Lords, commons, judges, all of them, they’re 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


213 


just a crew of brasted old fences and the lawyers 
getting in the stuff. Then you talk to me of 
stealing ! Stealing I 

The tramp’s contempt and his intense way of 
saying ^stealing’ were very unsettling to a sensi- 
tive mind. 

They bought some tea and grease in a village 
shop and the tramp made tea in his old tin with 
great dexterity and then they gnawed bread on 
which two ounces of margarine had been gener- 
ously distributed. ^^Live like fighting cocks, we 
do,” said the tramp wiping out his simple cuisine 
with the dragged-out end of his shirt sleeve. 
^^And if I’m not very much mistaken we’ll sleep 
to-night on a nice bit of hay. . . .” 

But these anticipations were upset by a sudden 
temptation, and instead of a starry summer com- 
fort the two were destined to spend a night of 
suffering and remorse. 

A green lane lured them off the road, and after 
some windings led them past a field of wire- 
netted enclosures containing a number of perfect 
and conceited-looking hens close beside a little 
cottage, a vegetable garden and some new elabo- 
rate outhouses. It was manifestly a poultry 
farm, and something about it gave the tramp 
the conviction that it had been left, that nobody 
was at home. 

These realizations are instinctive, they leap 
to the mind. He knew it, and an ambition to 
know further what was in the cottage came v/ith 
the knowledge. But it seemed to him desirable 
that the work of exploration should be done by 


214 


BEALBY 


Bealby. He had thought of dogs, and it seemed 
to him that Bealby might be unembarrassed by 
that idea. So he put the thing to Bealby. Let^s 
have a look round ^ere/’ he said. ^^You go in 
and see what^s abart. . . 

There was some difference of opinion. 
donT ask you to take anything/^ said the tramp. 
. . . ^‘Nobody wonT catch you. ... I tell 
you nobody won’t catch you. ... I tell you 
there ain’t nobody here to catch you. . . . Just 
for the fun of seeing in. I’ll go up by them 
outhouses. And I’ll see nobody comes. . . . 
Ain’t afraid to go up a garden path, are you? 
. . . I tell you, I don’t want you to steal. . . . 
You ain’t got much guts to funk a thing like that. 
. . . I’ll be abat too. . . . Thought you’d be 
the very chap for a bit of scarting. . . . Thought 
Boy Scarts was all the go nowadays. . . . Well, 
if you ain’t afraid you’d do it. . . . Well, why 
didn’t you say you’d do it at the beginning? . . .” 

Bealby went through the hedge and up a grass 
track between poultry runs, made a cautious in- 
spection of the outhouses and then approached 
the cottage. Everything was still. He thought 
it more plausible to go to the door than peep 
into the window. He rapped. Then after an 
interval of stillness he lifted the latch, opened the 
door and peered into the room. It was a 
pleasantly furnished room, and before the empty 
summer fireplace a very old white man was 
sitting in a chintz-covered arm-chair, lost it would 
seem in painful thought. He had a peculiar 
grey shruiiken look, his eyes were closed, a bony 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


215 


hand with the shiny texture of alabaster gripped 
the chair arm. . . . There was something about 
him that held Bealby quite still for a moment. 

And this old gentleman behaved very oddly. 

His body seemed to crumple into his chair, 
his hands slipped down from the arms, his head 
nodded forwards and his mouth and eyes seemed 
to open together. And he made a snoring 
sound. . . 

For a moment Bealby remained rigidly agape 
and then a violent desire to rejoin the tramp 
carried him back through the hen runs. ... 

He tried to describe what he had seen. 

Asleep with his mouth open,^’ said the tramp. 

Well, that ain’t anything so wonderful ! You got 
an)rthing? That’s what I want to know. . . . 
Did anyone ever see such a boy ? ’Ere ! I’ll 
go. . . . 

^^You keep a look out here,” said the tramp. 

But there was something about that old man 
in there, something so strange and alien to Bealby, 
that he could not remain alone in the falling 
twilight. He followed the cautious advances of 
the tramp towards the house. From the corner 
by the outhouses he saw the tramp go and peer in 
at the open door. He remained for some time 
peering, his head hidden from Bealby. . . . 

Then he went in. . . . 

Bealby had an extraordinary desire that some- 
body else would come. His soul cried out for 
help against some vaguely apprehended terror. 
And in the very moment of his wish came its 
fulfilment. He saw advancing up the garden 


216 


BEALBY 


path a tall woman in a blue serge dress, hatless 
and hurrying and carrying a little package — 
it was medicine — in her hand. And with her 
came a big black dog. At the sight of Bealby 
thb dog came forward barking and Bealby after 
a mementos hesitation turned and fled. 

The dog was quick. But Bealby was quicker. 
He went up the netting of a hen run and gave the 
dog no more than an ineffectual snap at his heels. 
And then dashing from the cottage door came the 
tramp. Under one arm was a brass-bound work- 
box and in the other was a candlestick and some 
smaller articles. He did not instantly grasp the 
situation of his treed companion, he was too 
anxious to escape the tall woman, and then with a 
yelp of dismay he discovered himself between 
woman and dog. All too late he sought to emulate 
Bealby. The workbox slipped from under his 
arm, the rest of his plunder fell from him, for an 
uneasy moment he was clinging to the side of the 
swaying hen run and then it had caved in and the 
dog had got him. 

The dog bit, desisted and then finding itself 
confronted by two men retreated. Bealby and 
the tramp rolled and scrambled over the other 
side of the collapsed netting into a parallel track 
and were halfway to the hedge before the dog, — 
but this time in a less vehement fashion, — re- 
sumed his attack. 

He did not close with them again and at the 
hedge he halted altogether and remained hacking 
the gloaming with his rage. 

The woman it seemed had gone into the house, 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


217 


leaving the tramp^s scattered loot upon the field 
of battle. 

‘‘This means mizzle/^ said the tramp, leading 
the way at a trot. 

Bealby saw no other course but to follow. 

He had a feeling as though the world had turned 
against him. He did not dare to think what he 
was nevertheless thinking of the events of these 
crowded ten minutes. He felt he had touched 
something dreadful ; that the twilight was full of 
accusations. . . . He feared and hated the tramp 
now, but he perceived something had linked 
them as they had not been linked before. What- 
ever it was they shared it. 

§6 

They fled through the night; it seemed to 
Bealby for interminable hours. At last when they 
were worn out and footsore they crept through a 
gate and found an uncomfortable cowering place 
in the corner of a field. 

As they went they talked but little, but the 
tramp kept up a constant muttering to himself. 
He was troubled by the thought of hydrophobia. 

“I know ril ^ave it,’^ he said, “I know Ifll get 
it.'' 

Bealby after a time ceased to listen to his com- 
panion. His mind was preoccupied. He could 
think of nothing but that very white man in the 
chair and the strange manner of his movement. 

“Was 'e awake when you saw 'im?" he asked 
at last. 


218 


BEALBY 


Awake — who ? ” 

“That old man/^ 

For a moment or so the tramp said nothing. 
“’E wasnT awake, you young silly/^ he said at 
last. 

“But — wasnT he?’^ 

“Why! — donT you know! ^E’d croaked, — 
popped off the ^ooks — very moment you saw 
hm.^’ 

For a moment Bealby^s voice failed him. 

Then he said quite faintly, “You mean — 
he^d — . Was dead?” 

“Didn’t you know?” said the tramp. “Gaw! 
AVhat a kid you are !” 

In that manner it was Bealby first saw a dead 
man. Never before had he seen anyone dead. 
And after that for all the night the old white 
man pursued him, with strange slowly-opening 
eyes, and a head on one side and his mouth 
suddenly and absurdly agape. . . . 

All night long that white figure presided over 
seas of dark dismay. It seemed always to be 
there, and yet Bealby thought of a score of other 
painful things. For the first time in his life he 
asked himself, “Where am I going? What am I 
drifting to?” The world beneath the old man’s 
dominance was a world of prisons. 

Bealby beheved he was a burglar and behind 
the darkness he imagined the outraged law 
already seeking him. And the terrors of his 
associate reinforced his own. 

He tried to think what he should do in the morn- 
ing. He dreaded the dawn profoundly. But he 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


219 


could not collect his thoughts because of the 
tramp’s incessant lapses into grumbling lamenta- 
tion. Bealby knew he had to get away from the 
tramp, but now he was too weary and alarmed to 
think of running away as a possible expedient. 
And besides there was the matter of his money. 
And beyond the range of the tramp’s voice there 
were darknesses which to-night at least might 
hold inconceivable forms of lurking evil. But 
could he not appeal to the law to save him? 
Repent? Was there not something called turning 
King’s Evidence? 

The moon was no comfort that night. Across 
it there passed with incredible slowness a number 
of jagged little black clouds, blacker than any 
clouds Bealby had ever seen before. They were 
like velvet palls, lined with snowy fur. There 
was no end to them. And one at last most 
horribly gaped slowly and opened a mouth. . . . 

§7 

At intervals there would be uncomfortable 
movements and the voice of the tramp came out 
of the darkness beside Bealby lamenting his 
approaching fate and discoursing — sometimes 
with violent expressions — on watch-dogs. 

know I shall ’ave ’idrophobia,” said the 
tramp. ^^I’ve always ’ad a disposition to ’idro- 
phobia. Always a dread of water — and now 
it’s got me. 

Think of it ! — keeping a beast to set at a 
’uman being. Where’s the brotherhood of it ? 


220 


BEALBY 


Whereas the law and the humanity? Getting a 
animal to set at a brother man. And a poisoned 
animal, a animal with death in his teeth. And 
a ^orrible death too. Whereas the sense and 
brotherhood ? 

“ Gaw ! when I felt hs teeth coming through 
my trasers — ! 

^^Dogs oughWt to be allowed. They^re a 
noosance in the towns and a danger in the country. 
They oughtnT to be allowed anywhere — not till 
every blessed ’uman being ^as got three square 
meals a day. Then if you like, keep a dog. 
And see ’e’s a clean dog. . . . 

Gaw ! if I^d been a bit quicker up that ^en 
roost — ! 

ought to 'ave landed hm a kick. 

^^It’s a man’s duty to ’urt a dog. When ’e 
sees a dog ’e ought to ’urt’ im. It’s a natural 
’atred. If dogs were what they ought to be, 
if dogs understood ’ow they’re situated, there 
wouldn’t be a dog go for a man ever. 

^^And if one did they’d shoot ’im. . . . 

After this if ever I get a chance to land a 
dog a oner with a stone I’ll land ’im one. I 
been too sorft with dogs. . . .” 

Towards dawn Bealby slept uneasily, to be 
awakened by the loud snorting curiosity of three 
lively young horses. He sat up in a blinding 
sunshine and saw the tramp looking very filthy 
and contorted, sleeping with his mouth wide 
open and an expression of dismay and despair on 
his f^oe. 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


221 


§8 

Bealby took his chance to steal away next 
morning while the tramp was engaged in artificial 
epilepsy. 

feel like fits this morning/^ said the tramp, 
could do it well. I want a bit of human 
kindness again. After that brasted dog. 

“I expect soon I’ll ’ave the foam all right 
withat any soap.” 

They marked down a little cottage before which 
a benevolent-looking spectacled old gentleman 
in a large straw hat and a thin alpaca jacket was 
engaged in budding roses. Then they retired to 
prepare. The tramp handed over to Bealby 
various compromising possessions, which might 
embarrass an afflicted person under the searching 
hands of charity. There was for example the 
piece of soap after he had taken sufflcient for his 
immediate needs, there was ninepence in money, 
there were the pack of cards with which they had 
played Euchre, a key or so and some wires, much 
assorted string, three tins, a large piece of bread, 
the end of a composite candle, a box of sulphur 
matches, list slippers, a pair of gloves, a clasp 
knife, sundry grey rags. They all seemed to 
have the distinctive flavour of the tramp. . . . 

^^If you do a bunk with these,” said the tramp. 
^^By Gawd—.” 

He drew his finger across his throat. 

(King’s Evidence.) 

Bealby from a safe distance watched the be- 
ginnings of the fit and it impressed him as a 


222 


BEALBY 


thoroughly nasty kind of fit. He saw the elderly 
gentleman hurry out of the cottage and stand for 
a moment looking over his little green garden 
gate, surveying the sufferings of the tramp with 
an expression of intense yet discreet commisera- 
tion. Then suddenly he was struck by an idea ; 
he darted in among his rose bushes and reappeared 
with a big watering-can and an enormous syringe. 
Still keeping the gate between himself and the 
sufferer he loaded his syringe very carefully and 
deliberately. . . . 

Bealby would have liked to have seen more but 
he felt his moment had come. Another instant 
and it might be gone again. Very softly he 
dropped from the gate on which he was sitting 
and made off like a running partridge along the 
hedge of the field. 

Just for a moment did he halt — at a strange 
sharp yelp that came from the direction of the 
little cottage. Then his purpose of flight resumed 
its control of him. 

He would strike across country for two or three 
miles, then make for the nearest police station 
and give himself up. (Loud voices. Was that 
the tramp murdering the benevolent old gentle- 
man in the straw hat or was it the benevolent old 
gentleman in the straw hat murdering the tramp ? 
No time to question. Onward, Onward !) The 
tramp^s cans rattled in his pocket. He drew one 
out, hesitated a moment and flung it away and 
then sent its two companions after it. . . . 

He found his police station upon the road be- 
tween Someport and Crayminster, a little peace- 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


223 


ful rural station, a mere sunny cottage with a 
blue and white label and a notice board covered 
with belated bills about the stealing of pheasants’ 
eggs. And another bill — . 

It was headed MISSING and the next most 
conspicuous words were £6 reward and the 
next ARTHUR BEALBY. 

He was fascinated. So swift, so terribly swift 
is the law. Already they knew of his burglary, 
of his callous participation in the robbing of a 
dead man. Already the sleuths were upon his 
trail. So surely did his conscience strike to this 
conclusion that even the carelessly worded offer 
of a reward that followed his description conveyed 
no different intimation to his mind. ^^To whom- 
soever will bring him back to Lady Laxton, at 
Shonts near Chelsmore,” so it ran. 

“And out of pocket expenses.” 

And even as Bealby read this terrible document, 
the door of the police station opened and a very 
big pink young policeman came out and stood 
regarding the world in a friendly, self-approving 
manner. He had innocent, happy, blue eyes; 
thus far he had had much to do with order and 
little with crime; and his rosebud mouth would 
have fallen open, had not discipline already 
closed it and set upon it the beginnings of a 
resolute expression that accorded ill with the 
rest of his open freshness. And when he had sur- 
veyed the sky and the distant hills and the little 
rose bushes that occupied the leisure of the force, 
his eyes fell upon Bealby. . . . 

Indecision has ruined more men than wicked- 


224 


BEALBY 


ness. And when one has slept rough and eaten 
nothing and one is conscious of a marred unclean 
appearance, it is hard to face one^s situations. 
V^at Bealby had intended to do was to go right 
up to a policeman and say to him, simply and 
frankly : want to turn King’s Evidence, please. 

I was in that burglary where there was a dead 
old man and a workbox and a woman and a dog. 
I was led astray by a bad character and I did not 
mean to do it. And really it was him that did 
it and not me.” 

But now his tongue clove to the roof of his 
mouth, he felt he could not speak, could not go 
through with it. His heart had gone down into 
his feet., Perhaps he had caught the tramp’s 
constitutional aversion to the police. He affected 
not to see the observant figure in the doorway. 
He assumed a slack careless bearing like one who 
reads by chance idly. He lifted his eyebrows to 
express unconcern. He pursed his mouth to 
whistle but no whistle came. He stuck his hands 
into his pockets, pulled up his feet as one pulls 
up plants by the roots and strolled away. 

He quickened his stroll as he supposed by im- 
perceptible degrees. He glanced back and saw 
that the young policeman had come out of the 
station and was reading the notice. And as the 
young policeman read he looked ever and again 
at Bealby like one who checks off items. 

Bealby quickened his pace and then, doing his 
best to suggest by the movements of his back a 
more boyish levity quite unconnected with the law, 
he broke into a trot. 


BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 


225 


Then presently he dropped back into a walking 
pace, pretended to see something in the hedge, 
stopped and took a sidelong look at the young 
policeman. 

He was coming along with earnest strides ; 
every movement of his suggested a stealthy hurry ! 

Bealby trotted and then becoming almost frank 
about it ran. He took to his heels. 

From the first it was not really an urgent 
chase ,* it was a stalking rather than a hunt, 
because the young policeman was too young and 
shy and lacking in confidence really to run after 
a boy without any definite warrant for doing so. 
When anyone came along he would drop into a 
smart walk and pretend not to be looking at 
Bealby but just going somewhere briskly. And 
after two miles of it he desisted, and stood for 
a time watching a heap of mangold wurzel directly 
and the disappearance of Bealby obliquely, and 
then when Bealby was quite out of sight he turned 
back thoughtfully towards his proper place. 

On the whole he considered he was well out of 
it. He might have made a fool of himself. . . . 

And yet, — five pounds reward ! 


Q 


CHAPTER VII 


THE BATTLE OP CRAYMINSTER 

§1 

Bealby was beginning to realize that running 
away from one^s situation and setting up for 
oneself is not so easy and simple a thing as it had 
appeared during those first days with the caravan. 
Three things he perceived had arisen to pursue 
him, two that followed in the daylight, the law 
and the tramp, and a third that came back at 
twilight, the terror of the darkness. And within 
there was a hollow faintness, for the afternoon was 
far advanced and he was extremely hungry. 
He had dozed away the early afternoon in the 
weedy corner of a wood. But for his hunger I 
think he would have avoided Crayminster. 

Within a mile of that place he had come upon 
the ^Missing’ notice again stuck to the end of a 
barn. He had passed it askance, and then with 
a sudden inspiration returned and tore it down. 
Somehow with the daylight his idea of turning 
King’s Evidence against the tramp had weakened. 
He no longer felt sure. 

Mustn’t one wait and be asked first to turn 
King’s Evidence? 

Suppose they said he had merely confessed. . . . 
226 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 227 


The Crayminster street had a picturesque 
nutritious look. Half-way down it was the 
White Hart with cyclist club signs on its walls 
and geraniums over a white porch, and beyond 
a house being built and already at the roofing 
pitch. To the right was a baker’s shop diffusing 
a delicious suggestion of buns and cake and to 
the left a little comfortable sweetstuff window 
and a glimpse of tables and a board: ^Teas.’ 
Tea ! He resolved to break into his ninepence 
boldly and generously. Very likely they would 
boil him an egg for a penny or so. Yet on the 
other hand if he just had three or four buns, soft 
new buns. He hovered towards the baker’s 
shop and stopped short. That bill was in the 
window ! 

He wheeled about sharply and went into the 
sweetstuff shop and found a table with a white 
cloth and a motherly little woman in a large cap. 
Tea? He could have an egg and some thick 
bread and butter and a cup of tea for fivepence. 
He sat down respectfully to await her preparations. 

But he was uneasy. 

He knew quite well that she would ask him 
questions. For that he was prepared. He said 
he was walking from his home in London to 
Someport to save the fare. ^^But you’re so 
dirty!” said the motherly little woman. “1 
sent my luggage by post, ma’m, and I lost my 
way and didn’t get it. And I don’t much mind, 
ma’m, if you don’t. Not washing. . . .” 

All that he thought he did quite neatly. But 
he wished there was not that bill in the baker’s 


228 


BEALBY 


window opposite and lie wished he hadn^t quite 
such a hunted feeling. A faint claustrophobia 
affected him. He felt the shop might be a trap. 
He would be glad to get into the open again. 
Was there a way out behind if for example a 
policeman blocked the door? He hovered to the 
entrance while his egg was boiling and then when 
he saw a large fat baker surveying the world 
with an afternoon placidity upon his face, he 
went back and sat by the table. He wondered 
if the baker had noted him. 

He had finished his egg; he was drinking his 
tea with appreciative noises, when he discovered 
that the baker had noted him. Bealby^s eyes, at 
first inanely open above the tilting tea cup, were 
suddenly riveted on something that was going on 
in the baker^s window. From where he sat he 
could see that detestable bill, and then slowly, 
feeling about for it, he beheld a hand and a floury 
sleeve. The bill was drawn up and vanished and 
then behind a glass shelf of fancy bread and a 
glass shelf of buns something pink and indistinct 
began to move jerkily. ... It was a human 
face and it was trying to peer into the little re- 
freshment shop that sheltered Bealby. . , . 

Bealby’s soul went faint. 

He had one inadequate idea. Might I go 
out,’^ he said, ^^by your back way?’’ 

There isn’t a back way,” said the motherly 
little woman. '^There’s a yard — .” 

^Hf I might,” said Bealby, and was out in it. 

No way at all ! High walls on every side. He 
was back like a shot in the shop, and now the 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 229 


baker was half-way across the road. ^^Five- 
pence/’ said Bealby and gave the little old woman 
sixpence. Here/’ she cried, “ take your penny ! ” 

He did not wait. He darted out of the door. 

The baker was all over the way of escape. He 
extended arms that seemed abnormally long and 
with a weak cry Bealby found himself trapped. 
Trapped, but not hopelessly. He knew how to do 
it. He had done it in milder forms before, but 
now he did it with all his being. Under the 
diaphragm of the baker smote Bealby’s hard 
little head, and instantly he was away running 
up the quiet sunny street. Man when he as- 
sumed the erect attitude made a hostage of his 
belly. It is a proverb among the pastoral Berbers 
of the Atlas mountains that the man who extends 
his arms in front of an angry ram is a fool. 

It seemed probable to Bealby that he would get 
away up the street. The baker was engaged in 
elaborately falling backward, making the most of 
sitting down in the road, and the wind had been 
knocked out of him so that he could not shout. 
He emitted ^^Stop him!” in large whispers. 
Away ahead there were only three builder’s men 
sitting under the wall beyond the White Hart, 
consuming tea out of their tea cans. But the 
boy who was trimming the top of the tall privet 
hedge outside the doctor’s saw the assault of 
the baker and incontinently uttered the shout 
that the baker could not. Also he fell off his 
steps with great alacrity and started in pursuit 
of Bealby. A young man from anywhere — 
perhaps the grocer’s shorp — also started for 


230 


BEALBY 


Bealby. But the workmen were slow to rise to 
the occasion. Bealby could have got past them. 
And then, abruptly at the foot of the street 
ahead the tramp came into view, a battered dis- 
concerting figure. His straw-coloured hat which 
had recently been wetted and dried in the sun 
was a swaying mop. The sight of Bealby seemed 
to rouse him from some disagreeable meditations. 
He grasped the situation with a terrible quickness. 
Regardless of the wisdom of the pastoral Berbers 
he extended his arms and stood prepared xo 
intercept. 

Bealby thought at the rate of a hundred 
thoughts to the minute. He darted sideways 
and was up the ladder and among the beams and 
rafters of the unfinished roof before the pursuit 
had more than begun. “Here, come off that,^’ 
cried the foreman builder, only now joining in 
the hunt with any sincerity. He came across the 
road while Bealby regarded him wickedly from 
the rafters above. Then as the good man made 
to ascend Bealby got him neatly on the hat, 
it was a bowler hat, with a tile. This checked 
the advance. There was a disposition to draw a 
little off and look up at Bealby. One of the 
younger builders from the opposite sidewalk got 
him very neatly in the ribs with a stone. But two 
other shots went wide and Bealby shifted to a 
more covered position behind the chimney stack. 

From here, however, he had a much less effective 
command of the ladder, and he perceived that 
his tenure of the new house was not likely to be a 
long one. 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 231 


Below, men parleyed. ^^Who is ’e?’’ asked 
the foreman builder. ^^Where^d ’e come from?^^ 
a brasted little thief, said the tramp. 
^^^E’s one of the wust characters on the road.” 
The baker was recovering his voice now. 
‘‘There^s a reward out for hm,” he said, '^and ^e 
butted me in the stummick.” 

'^’Ow much reward?” asked the foreman 
builder. 

^^Five pound for the man who catches him.” 

^‘^Ere !” cried the foreman builder in an arrest- 
ing voice to the tramp. Just stand away from 
that ladder. . . .” 

Whatever else Bealby might or might not be, 
one thing was very clear about him and that 
was that he was a fugitive. And the instinct 
of humanity is to pursue fugitives. Man is a 
hunting animal, enquiry into the justice of a case 
is an altogether later accretion to his complex 
nature, and that is why, whatever you are or 
whatever you do, you should never let people get 
you on the run. There is a joy in the mere fact 
of hunting, the sight of a scarlet coat and a hound 
will brighten a whole village, and now Cray- 
minster was rousing itself like a sleeper who wakes 
to sunshine and gay music. People were looking 
out of windows and coming out of shops, a police- 
man appeared and heard the baker^s simple story, 
a brisk hatless young man in a white apron and 
with a pencil behind his ear became prominent. 
Bealby, peeping over the ridge of the roof, looked 
a thoroughly dirty and unpleasant little creature 
to all these people. The only spark of human 


232 


BEALBY 


sympathy for him below was in the heart of the 
little old woman in the cap who had given him 
his breakfast. She surveyed the roof of the new 
house from the door of her shop, she hoped Bealby 
wouldn^t hurt himself up there, and she held his 
penny change clutched in her hand in her apron 
pocket with a vague idea that perhaps presently 
if he ran past she could very quickly give it 
him. 

§2 

Considerable delay in delivering the assault on 
the house was caused by the foreman’s insistence 
that he alone should ascend the ladder to capture 
Bealby. He was one of those regular-featured 
men with large heads who seem to have inflexible 
backbones, he was large and fair and full with a 
sweetish chest voice and in all his movements 
authoritative and deliberate. Wlienever he made 
to ascend he discovered that people were straying 
into his building, and he had to stop and direct 
his men how to order them off. Inside his large 
head he was trying to arrange everybody to cut 
off Bealby’s line of retreat without risking that 
anybody but himself should capture the fugitive. 
It was none too easy and it knitted his brows. 
Meanwhile Bealby was able to reconnoitre the 
adjacent properties and to conceive plans for a 
possible line of escape. He also got a few tiles 
handy against when the rush up the ladder came. 
At the same time two of the younger workmen 
were investigating the possibility of getting at 
him from inside the house. There was still no 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 233 


staircase, but there were ways of clambering. 
They had heard about the reward and they knew 
that they must do this before the foreman realized 
their purpose, and this a little retarded them. 
In their pockets they had a number of stones, 
ammunition in reserve, if it came again to throw- 
ing. 

Bealby was no longer fatigued nor depressed ; 
anxiety for the future was lost in the excitement 
of the present, and his heart told him that, come 
what might, getting on to the roof was an ex- 
traordinarily good dodge. 

And if only he could bring off a certain jump he 
had in mind, there were other dodges — ... 

In the village street an informal assembly of 
leading citizens, a little recovered now from their 
first nervousness about flying tiles, discussed 
the problem of Bealby. There was Mumby, the 
draper and vegetarian, with the bass voice and 
the big black beard. He advocated the fire 
engine. He was one of the volunteer fire brigade 
and never so happy as when he was wearing 
his helmet. He had come out of his shop at 
the shouting. Schocks the butcher, and his boy 
were also in the street. Schocks^s yard, with its 
heap of manure and fodder, bounded the new house 
on the left. Rymell the vet emerged from the 
billiard room of the White Hart, and with his head 
a little on one side was watching Bealby and 
replying attentively to the baker, who was asking 
him a number of questions that struck him as 
irrelevant. All the White Hart people were in 
the street. 


234 


BEALBY 


suppose, Mr. Rymell/^ said the baker, 
^Hhere^s a mort of dangerous things in a man’s 
belly round about ’is Stummick?” 

‘‘Tiles,” said Mr. Rymell. “Loose bricks. It 
wouldn’t do if he started dropping those.” 

“I was saying, Mr. Rymell,” said the baker, 
after a pause for digestion, “is a man likely 
to be injured badly by a Blaw in his stummick?” 

Mr. Rymell stared at him for a moment with 
unresponsive eyes. “More likely to get you in 
the head,” he said, and then, “Here! What’s 
that fool of a carpenter going to do ?” 

The tramp was hovering on the outskirts of 
the group of besiegers, vindictive but dispirited. 
He had been brought to from his fit and given a 
shilling by the old gentleman, but he was dread- 
fully wet between his shirt — he wore a shirt, 
under three waistcoats and a coat — and his 
skin, because the old gentleman’s method of 
revival had been to syringe him suddenly with 
cold water. It had made him weep with astonish- 
ment and misery. Now he saw no advantage 
in claiming Bealby publicly. His part, he felt, 
was rather a waiting one. What he had to say 
to Bealby could be best said without the assistance 
of a third person. And he wanted to understand 
more of this talk about a reward. If there was a 
reward out for Bealby — 

“That’s not a bad dodge !” said Rymell, chang- 
ing his opinion of the foreman suddenly as that 
individual began his ascent of the ladder with 
a bricklayer’s hod carried shield- wise above his 
head. He went up with djh&culty and slowly 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 235 


because of the extreme care he took to keep his 
head protected. But no tiles came. Bealby 
had discovered a more dangerous attack de- 
veloping inside the house and was already in 
retreat down the other side of the building. 

He did a leap that might have hurt him badly, 
taking off from the corner of the house and 
jumping a good twelve feet on to a big heap of 
straw in the butcher’s yard. He came down on all 
fours and felt a little jarred for an instant, and 
then he was up again and had scrambled up by a 
heap of manure to the top of the butcher’s wall. 
He was over that and into Maccullum’s yard 
next door before anyone in the front of the new 
house had realized that he was in flight. Then one 
of the two workmen who had been coming up 
inside the house saw him from the oblong opening 
that was some day to be the upstairs bedroom 
window, and gave tongue. 

It was thirty seconds later, and after Bealby 
had vanished from the butcher’s wall that the 
foreman, still clinging to his hod, appeared over 
the ridge of the roof. At the workman’s shout 
the policeman, who with the preventive disposi- 
tion of his profession, had hitherto been stopping 
anyone from coming into the unfinished house, 
turned about and ran out into its brick and 
plaster and timber-littered backyard, whereupon 
the crowd in the street realizing that the quarry 
had gone away and no longer restrained, came 
pouring partly through the house and partly 
round through the butcher’s gate into his yard. 

Bealby had had a check. 


236 


BEALBY 


He had relied upon the tarred felt roof of the 
mushroom shed of Maccullum the tailor and 
breeches-maker to get him to the wall that gave 
upon Mr. Benshaw^s strawberry fields and he 
had not seen from his roof above the ramshackle 
glazed outhouse which Maccullum called his 
workroom and in which four industrious tailors 
were working in an easy dishabille. The roof of 
the shed was the merest tarred touchwood, it 
had perished as felt long ago, it collapsed under 
Bealby, he went down into a confusion of mush- 
rooms and mushroom-bed, he blundered out 
trailing mushrooms and spawn and rich matter, 
he had a nine-foot wall to negotiate and only 
escaped by a hair^s-breadth from the clutch of a 
little red-slippered man who came dashing out 
from the workroom. But by a happy use of the 
top of the dustbin he did just get away over the 
wall in time, and the red-slippered tailor, who 
was not good at walls, was left struggling to imi- 
tate an ascent that had looked easy enough until 
he came to try it. 

For a moment the little tailor struggled alone 
and then both Maccullum’s little domain and 
the butcher’s yard next door and the little patch 
of space behind the new house, were violently 
injected with a crowd of active people, all con- 
fusedly on the Bealby trail. Someone, he never 
knew who, gave the little tailor a leg-up and then 
his red slippers twinkled over the wall and he was 
leading the hunt into the market gardens of Mr. 
Benshaw. A oollarless colleague in list slippers 
and con^icuous braces followed. The poMceman, 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 237 


after he had completed the wreck of Mr. Mac- 
cullum^s mushroom shed, came next, and then 
Mr. Maccullum, with no sense of times and 
seasons, anxious to have a discussion at once upon 
the question of this damage. Mr. Maccullum 
was out of breath and he never got further with 
this projected conversation than ^^Here!’^ This 
he repeated several times as opportunity seemed 
to offer. The remaining tailors got to the top of 
the wall more sedately with the help of the Mac- 
cullum kitchen steps and dropped; Mr. Schocks 
followed, breathing hard, and then a fresh jet of 
humanity came squirting into the gardens through 
a gap in the fence at the back of the building site. 
This was led by the young workman who had 
first seen Bealby go away. Hard behind him came 
Rymell, the vet, the grocer^s assistant, the doctor^s 
page-boy and, less briskly, the baker. Then the 
tramp. Then Mumby and Schocks’s boy. Then 
a number of other people. The seeking of Bealby 
had assumed the dimensions of a Hue and Cry. 

The foreman with the large head and the 
upright back was still on the new roof; he was 
greatly distressed at the turn things had taken 
and shouted his claims to a major share in the 
capture of Bealby, mixed with his opinions of 
Bealby and a good deal of mere swearing, to a 
sunny but unsympathetic sky. . . . 

§3 

Mr. Benshaw was a small holder, a sturdy 
English yeoman of the new school. He was 


238 


BEALBY 


an Anti-Socialist, a self-helper, an independent- 
spirited man. He had a steadily growing banking 
account and a plain but sterile wife, and he was 
dark in complexion and so erect in his bearing as 
to seem a little to lean forward. Usually he 
wore a sort of grey gamekeeper^ s suit with brown 
gaiters (except on Sundays when the coat was 
black), he was addicted to bowler hats that ac- 
corded ill with his large grave grey-coloured face, 
and he was altogether a very sound strong man. 
His bowler hats did but accentuate that. He 
had no time for vanities, even the vanity of dress- 
ing consistently. He went into the nearest shop 
and just bought the cheapest hat he could, and 
so he got hats designed for the youthful and 
giddy, hats with flighty crowns and flippant 
bows and amorous brims that undulated attrac- 
tively to set off flushed and foolish young faces. 
It made his unrelenting face look rather like the 
Puritans under the Stuart monarchy. 

He was a horticulturist rather than a farmer. 
He had begun his career in cheap lodgings with a 
field of early potatoes and cabbages, supple- 
mented by employment, but with increased 
prosperity his area of cultivation had extended 
and his methods intensified. He now grew con- 
siderable quantities of strawberries, raspberries, 
celery, seakale, asparagus, early peas, late peas, 
and onions, and consumed more stable manure 
than any other cultivator within ten miles of 
Crayminster. He was beginning to send cut 
flowers to London. He had half an acre of glass 
and he was rapidly extending it. He had built 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 239 


himself a cottage on lines of austere economy, 
and a bony-looking dwelling house for some of 
his men. He also owned a number of useful 
sheds of which tar and corrugated iron were con- • 
spicuous features. His home was furnished with 
the utmost respectability, and notably joyless 
even in a countryside where gaiety is regarded 
as an impossible quality in furniture. He was 
already in a small local way a mortgagee. Good 
fortune had not turned the head of Mr. Benshaw 
nor robbed him of the feeling that he was a 
particularly deserving person, entitled to a prefer- 
ential treatment from a country which in his 
plain unsparing way he felt that he enriched. 

In many ways he thought that the country was 
careless of his needs. And in none more careless 
than in the laws relating to trespass. Across his 
dominions ran three footpaths, and one of these 
led to the public elementary school. That he 
should have to maintain this latter — and if he 
did not keep it in good order the children spread 
out and made parallel tracks among his culti- 
vations — seemed to him a thing almost intoler- 
ably unjust. He mended it with cinders, acety- 
lene refuse, which he believed and hoped to be 
thoroughly bad for boots, and a peculiarly slimy 
chalky clay, and he put on a board at each end 
^^Keep to the footpaths, Trespassers will be 
prosecuted, by Order, which he painted himself 
to save expense when he was confined indoors 
by the influenza. Still more unjust it would be, 
he felt, for him to spend money upon effective 
fencing, and he could find no fencing cheap enough 


240 


BEALBY 


and ugly enough and painful enough and im- 
possible enough to express his feelings in the 
matter. Every day the children streamed to 
and fro, marking how his fruits ripened and 
his produce became more esculent. And other 
people pursued these tracks ; many, Mr. Benshaw 
was convinced, went to and fro through his orderly 
crops who had no business whatever, no honest 
business, to pass that way. Either, he concluded, 
they did it to annoy him, or they did it to injure 
him. This continual invasion aroused in Mr. 
Benshaw all that stern anger against unrighteous- 
ness latent in our race which more than any other 
single force has made America and the Empire 
what they are to-day. Once already he had 
been robbed — a raid upon his raspberries — 
and he felt convinced that at any time he might 
be robbed again. He had made representations 
to the local authority to get the footpath closed, 
but in vain. They defended themselves with the 
paltry excuse that the children would then have 
to go nearly a mile round to the school. 

It was not only the tyranny of these footpaths 
that offended Mr. Benshaw^s highly developed 
sense of Individual Liberty. All round his rather 
straggling dominions his neighbours displayed an 
ungenerous indisposition to maintain their fences 
to his satisfaction. In one or two places, in aban- 
donment of his clear rights in the matter, he had, 
at his own expense, supplemented these lax de- 
fences with light barbed wire defences. But it was 
not a very satisfactory sort of barbed wire. He 
wanted barbed wire with extra spurs like a fighting 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 241 


cock; he wanted barbed wire that would start 
out after nightfall and attack passers-by. This 
boundary trouble was universal ; in a way it 
was worse than the footpaths which after all 
only affected the Cage Fields where his straw- 
berries grew. Except for the yard and garden 
walls of Maccullum and Schocks and that side, 
there was not really a satisfactory foot of en- 
closure all round Mr. Benshaw. On the one side 
rats and people^s dogs and scratching cats came 
in, on the other side rabbits. The rabbits were 
intolerable and recently there had been a rise of 
nearly thirty per cent in the price of wire netting. 

Mr. Benshaw wanted to hurt rabbits ; he did 
not want simply to kill them, he wanted so to kill 
them as to put the fear of death into the burrows. 
He wanted to kill them so that scared little furry 
survivors with their tails as white as ghosts would 
go lolloping home and say, say, you chaps, 
weM better shift out of this. WeTe up against a 
Strong Determined Man. . . 

I have made this lengthy statement of Mr. 
Benshaw^s economic and moral difficulties in 
order that the reader should understand the 
peculiar tension that already existed upon this 
side of Crayminster. It has been necessary to 
do so now because in a few seconds there will 
be no further opportunity for such preparations. 

There had been trouble, I may add very hastily, 
about the shooting of Mr. Benshaw’s gun; a 
shower of small shot had fallen out of the twilight 
upon the umbrella and basket of old Mrs. Fro- 
bisher. And only a week ago an unsympathetic 


242 


BEALBY 


bench after a hearing of over an hour and in the 
face of overwhelming evidence had refused to 
convict little Lucy Mumby, aged eleven, of 
stealing fruit from Mr. Benshaw^s fields. She 
had been caught red-handed. . . . 

At the very moment that Bealby was butting 
the baker in the stomach, Mr. Benshaw was just 
emerging from his austere cottage after a whole- 
some but inexpensive high tea in which he had 
finished up two left-over cold sausages, and he 
was considering very deeply the financial side of 
a furious black fence that he had at last de- 
cided should pen in the school children from 
further depredations. It should be of splintery 
tarred deal, and high, with well-pointed tops 
studded with sharp nails, and he believed that 
by making the path only two feet wide, a real 
saving of ground for cultivation might be made 
and a very considerable discomfort for the public 
arranged, to compensate for his initial expense. 
The thought of a narrow lane which would in 
winter be characterized by an excessive slimness 
and from which there would be no lateral escape 
was pleasing to a mind by no means absolutely 
restricted to considerations of pounds, shillings 
and pence. In his hand after his custom he carried 
a hoe, on the handle of which feet were marked, 
so that it was available not only for destroying 
the casual weed but also for purposes of measurer 
ment. With this he now checked his estimate and 
found that here he would reclaim as much as three 
feet of trodden waste, here a full two. 

Absorbed in these calculations, he heeded little 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 243 


the growth of a certain clamour from the backs 
of the houses bordering on the High Street. It 
did not appear to concern him and Mr. Benshaw 
made it almost ostentatiously his rule to mind his 
own business. His eyes remained fixed on the 
lumpy, dusty, sunbaked track, that with an in- 
telligent foresight he saw already transformed into 
a deterrent slough of despond for the young. . . . 

Then quite suddenly the shouting took on a new 
note. He glanced over his shoulder almost in- 
voluntarily and discovered that after all this up- 
roar was his business. Amazingly his business. 
His mouth assumed a Cromwellian fierceness. 
His grip tightened on his hoe. That anyone 
should dare ! But it was impossible ! 

His dominions were being invaded with a pe- 
culiar boldness and violence. 

Ahead of everyone else and running with wild 
wavings of the arms across his strawberries was 
a small and very dirty little boy. He impressed 
Mr. Benshaw merely as a pioneer. Some thirty 
yards behind him was a little collarless, short- 
sleeved man in red slippers running with great 
effrontery and behind him another still more 
denuded lunatic, also in list slippers and with 
braces — braces of inconceivable levity. And 
then Wiggs, the policeman, hotly followed by Mr. 
Maccullum. Then more distraught tailors and 
Schocks the butcher. But a louder shout heralded 
the main attack, and Mr. Benshaw turned his 
eyes — already they were slightly blood-shot eyes 
— to the right, and saw, pouring through the 
broken hedge, a disorderly crowd, Rymell whom 


244 


BEALBY 


he had counted his friend, the grocer^s assistant, 
the doctor^s boy, some strangers — Mumby ! 

At the sight of Mumby, Mr. Benshaw leapt at 
a conclusion. He saw it all. The whole place 
was rising against him ; they were asserting some 
infernal new right-of-way. Mumby — Mumby 
had got them to do it. All the fruits of fifteen 
years of toil, all the care and accumulation of Mr. 
Benshaw^s prime, were to be trampled and torn 
to please a draper’s spite ! . . . 

Sturdy yeoman as Mr. Benshaw was he resolved 
instantly to fight for his liberties. One moment 
he paused to blow the powerful police whistle 
he carried in his pocket and then rushed forward 
in the direction of the hated Mumby, the leader 
of trespassers, the parent and abetter and de- 
fender of the criminal Lucy. He took the hurry- 
ing panting man almost unawares, and with one 
wild sweep of the hoe felled him to the earth. 
Then he staggered about and smote again, but not 
quite in time to get the head of Mr. Rymell. 

This whistle he carried was part of a systematic 
campaign he had developed against trespassers 
and fruit stealers. He and each of his assistants 
carried one, and at the first shrill note — it was 
his rule — everyone seized on every weapon 
that was handy and ran to pursue and capture. 
All his assistants were extraordinarily prompt 
in responding to these alarms, which were often 
the only break in long days of strenuous and 
strenuously directed toil. So now with an as- 
tonishing promptitude and animated faces men 
appeared from sheds and greenhouses and distant 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 245 


patches of culture, hastening to the assistance of 
their dour employer. 

It says much for the amiable relations that 
existed between employers and employed in those 
days before Syndicalism became the creed of 
the younger workers that they did hurry to his 
assistance. 

But many rapid things were to happen before 
they came into action. For first a strange 
excitement seized upon the tramp. A fantastic 
delusive sense of social rehabilitation took pos- 
session of his soul. Here he was pitted against 
a formidable hoe-wielding man, who for some in- 
scrutable reason was resolved to cover the re- 
treat of Bealby. And all the world, it seemed, 
was with the tramp and against this hoe-wielder. 
All the tremendous forces of human society, 
against which the tramp had struggled for 
so many years, whose power he knew and 
feared as only the outlaw can, had suddenly 
come into line with him. Across the strawberries 
to the right there was even a policeman hastening 
to join the majority, a policeman closely followed 
by a tradesman of the blackest, most respectable 
quality. The tramp had a vision of himself as 
a respectable man heroically leading respect- 
able people against outcasts. He dashed the 
lank hair from his eyes, waved his arms laterally, 
and then with a loud strange cry flung himself 
towards Mr. Benshaw. Two pairs of super- 
imposed coat-tails flapped behind him. And 
Hien the hoe whistled -^rou^ the air and the 
tramp fell to the ground like a slack. 


246 


BEALBY 


But now Schocks^s boy had grasped his oppor- 
tunity. He had been working discreetly round 
behind Mr. Benshaw, and as the hoe smote he 
leapt upon that hero’s back and seized him about 
the neck with both arms and bore him staggering 
to the ground, and Kymell, equally quick, and 
used to the tackhng of formidable creatures, had 
snatched and twisted away the hoe and grappled 
Mr. Benshaw almost before he was down. The 
first of Mr. Benshaw’s helpers to reach the fray 
found the issue decided, his master held down 
conclusively and a growing circle trampling down 
a wide area of strawberry plants about the pant- 
ing group. . . . 

Mr. Mumby, more frightened than hurt, was 
already sitting up, but the tramp with a glowing 
wound upon his cheekbone and an expression of 
astonishment in his face, lay low and pawed the 
earth. 

^^What d’you mean,” gasped Mr. Bymell, 
^^hitting people about with that hoe?” 

“What d’you mean,” groaned Mr. Benshaw, 
“running across my strawberries?” 

“We were going after that boy.” 

“Pounds and pounds’ worth of damage. Mis- 
chief and wickedness. . . . Mumby!” 

Mr. Rymell, suddenly realizing the true values 
of the situation, released Mr. Benshaw’s hands 
and knelt up. “Look here, Mr. Benshaw,” he 
said, “you seem to be under the impression we 
are trespassing.” 

Mr. Benshaw, struggling into a sitting position 
was understood to enquire with some heat what 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 247 


Mr. Rymell called it. Schocks’s boy picked up 
the hat with the erotic brim and handed it to the 
horticulturist silently and respectfully. 

‘^We were not trespassing/^ said Mr. Rymell. 
^^We were following up that boy. He was tres- 
passing, if you like. ... By the bye, — where 
is the boy? Has anyone caught him?^^ 

At the question, attention which had been fo- 
cussed upon Mr. Benshaw and his hoe, came round. 
Across the field in the direction of the sunlit 
half acre of glass the little tailor was visible 
standing gingerly and picking up his red slippers 
for the third time — they would come off in that 
loose good soil, everybody else had left the trail 
to concentrate on Mr. Benshaw — and Bealby — . 
Bealby was out of sight. He had escaped, clean 
got away. 

'^What boy?^’ asked Mr. Benshaw. 

'^Ferocious little beast who^s fought us like a 
rat. Been committing all sorts of crimes about 
the country. Five pounds reward for him.’^ 
Fruit stealing?’’ asked Mr. Benshaw. 

“Yes,” said Mr. Rymell, chancing it. 

Mr. Benshaw reflected slowly. His eyes sur- 
veyed his trampled crops. “Gooo Lord.^” 
he cried. “Look at those strawberries!” His 
voice gathered violence. “And that lout there 1” 
he said. “Why ! — he’s lying on them ! That’s 
the brute who went for me 1” 

“You got him a pretty tidy one side the 
head!” said Maccullum. 

The tramp rolled over on some fresh straw- 
berries and, groaned pitifully. 


248 


BEALBY 


hurt,” said Mr. Mumby. 

The tramp flopped and lay still. 

“Get some water!” said Rymell, standing up. 

At the word water, the tramp started convul- 
sively, rolled over and sat up with a dazed ex- 
pression. 

“No water,” he said weakly. “No more 
water,” and then catching Mr. Benshaw^s eye 
he got rather quickly to his feet. 

Everybody who wasn’t already standing was 
getting up, and everyone now was rather care- 
fully getting himself off any strawberry plant he 
had chanced to find himself smashing in the 
excitement of the occasion. 

“That’s the man that started in on me,” said 
Mr. Benshaw. “What’s he doing here? Wlio 
is he?” 

“ Who are yoUj my man ? What business have 
you to be careering over this field?” asked Mr. 
Rymell. 

“I was only ’elping,” said the tramp. 

“Nice help,” said Mr. Benshaw. 

“I thought that boy was a thief or something.” 

“And so you made a rush at me.” 

“ I didn’t exactly — sir — I thought you was 
’elping ’im.” 

“You be off, anyhow,” said Mr. Benshaw. 
“Whatever you thought.” 

“Yes, you be off!” said Mr. Rymell. 

“That’s the way, my man,” said Mr. Benshaw. 
“We haven’t any jobs for you. The sooner we 
have you out of it the better for everyone. Get 
right on to the path and keep it.” And with a 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 249 


desolating sense of exclusion the tramp withdrew. 
‘^There^s pounds and pounds^ worth of damage 
here/’ said Mr. Benshaw. ^^This job’ll cost me 
a pretty penny. Look at them berries there. 
Why, they ain’t fit for jam ! And all done by 
one confounded boy.” xAn evil light came into 
Mr. Benshaw’s eyes. You leave him to me and 
my chaps. If he’s gone up among those sheds 
there — we’ll settle with him. Anyhow there’s 
no reason why my fruit should be trampled worse 
than it has been. Fruit stealer, you -say, he is?” 

‘‘They live on the country this time of year,” 
said Mr. Mumby. 

“And catch them doing a day’s work picking !” 
said Mr. Benshaw. “I know the sort.” 

“There’s a reward of five pounds for ’im al- 
ready,” said the baker. . . . 

§4 

You perceive how humanitarian motives may 
sometimes defeat their own end, and how little 
Lady Laxton’s well-intentioned handbills were 
serving to rescue Bealby. Instead, they were 
turning him into a scared and hunted animal. 
In spite of its manifest impossibility he was con- 
vinced that the reward and this pursuit had to do 
with his burglary of the poultry farm, and that 
his capture would be but the preliminary to prison, 
trial and sentence. His one remaining idea was 
to get away. But his escape across the market 
gardens had left him so blown and spent, that he 
was obliged to hide up for a time in this perilous 


250 


BEALBY 


neighbourliood, before going on. He saw a dis- 
used-looking shed in the lowest corner of the 
gardens behind the greenhouses, and by doubling 
sharply along a hedge he got to it unseen. It was 
not disused — nothing in Mr. Benshaw^s posses- 
sion ever was absolutely disused, but it was filled 
with horticultural lumber, with old calcium car- 
bide tins, with broken wheelbarrows and damaged 
ladders awaiting repair, with some ragged wheel- 
ing planks and surplus rolls of roofing felt. At 
the back were some unhinged shed doors leaning 
against the wall, and between them Bealby tucked 
himself neatly and became still, glad of any 
respite from the chase. 

He would wait for twilight and then get away 
across the meadows at the back and then go — 
He didn^t know whither. And now he had no 
confidence in the wild world any more. A qualm 
of home-sickness for the compact little gardener's 
cottage at Shonts, came to Bealby. Why, as a 
matter of fact, wasn't he there now ? 

He ought to have tried more at Shonts. 

He ought to have minded what they told him 
and not have taken up a toasting fork against 
Thomas. Then he wouldn't now have been a 
hunted burglar with a reward of five pounds on 
his head and nothing in his pocket but threepence 
and a pack of greasy playing cards, a box of sul- 
phur matches and various objectionable sundries, 
none of which were properly his own. 

If only he could have his time over again ! 

Such wholesome reflections occupied his 
thoughts until the onset of the dusk stirred him 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 251 


to departure. He crept out of his hiding-place 
and stretched his limbs which had got very stiff, 
and was on the point of reconnoitring from the 
door of the shed when he became aware of stealthy 
footsteps outside. 

With the quickness of an animal he shot back 
into his hiding-place. The footsteps had halted. 
For a long time it seemed the unseen waited, 
listening. Had he heard Bealby ? 

Then someone fumbled with the door of the 
shed ; it opened, and there was a long pause of 
cautious inspection. 

Then the unknown had shuffled into the shed 
and sat down on a heap of matting. 

^^Gaw said a voice. 

The tramp's ! 

^Hf ever I struck a left-handed Mascot it was 
that boy," said the tramp. ^^The little swine 

For the better part of two minutes he went on 
from this mild beginning to a descriptive elabora- 
tion of Bealby. For the first time in his life 
Bealby learnt how unfavourable was the impres- 
sion he might leave on a fellow creature's mind. 

^^Took even my matches!" cried the tramp, 
and tried this statement over with variations. 

First that old fool with his syringe!" The 
tramp's voice rose in angry protest. Here's a 
chap dying epilepsy on your doorstep and all 
you can do is to squirt cold water at him ! Cold 
water ! Why you might kill a man doing that ! 
And then say you'd thought'd bring 'im rand ! 
Bring 'im rand ! You be jolly glad I didn't 
stash your silly face in. You [misbegotten! old 


252 


BEALB^ 


fool ! What’s a shilling for wetting a man to ’is 
skin. Wet through I was. Running inside my 
shirt, — dripping. . . , And then the blooming 
boy clears ! 

I don’t know what boys are coming to!” 
cried the tramp. “These board schools it is. 
Gets ’old of everything ’e can and bunks ! Gaw ! 
if I get my ’ands on ’im, I’ll show ’im. I’ll — ” 

For some time the tramp revelled in the details, 
for the most part crudely surgical, of his ven- 
geance upon Bealby. . . . 

“Then there’s that dog bite. ’Ow do I know 
’ow that’s going to turn at ? If I get ’idrophobia, 
blowed if I don’t hite some of ’em. ’Idrophobia. 
Screaming and foaming. Nice death for a man 
— my time o’ life ! Bark I shall. Bark and bite. 

“And this is your world,” said the tramp. 
“This is the world you put people into and ex- 
pect ’em to be ’appy. . . . 

“I’d like to bite that dough-faced fool with the 
silly ’at. I’d enjoy biting Hm. I’d spit it out 
but I’d bite it right enough. Wiping abat with 
’is ’0. Gaw ! Get off my ground 1 Be orf with 
you. Slash. ’E ought to be shut up. 

“Where’s the justice of it? ” shouted the tramp. 
“Where’s the right and the sense of it? WFat 
’ave I done that I should always get the under 
side? Wliy should I be stuck on the under side 
of everything? There’s worse men than me in 
all sorts of positions. . . . Judges there are. 
’Orrible Kerecters. Ministers and people. I’ve 
read abat ’em in the papers. . . . 

“It’s we tramps are the scapegoats. Some- 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 253 


body^s got to suffer so as the police can show a 
face. Gaw ! Some of these days I^ll do some- 
thing. Iffl do something. You’ll drive me too 
far with it. I tell you — ” 

He stopped suddenly and listened. Bealby 
had creaked. 

“Gaw! What can one do?” said the tramp 
after a long interval. 

And then complaining more gently, the tramp 
began to feel about to make his simple prepara- 
tions for the night. 

“’Unt me out of this, I expect,” said the tramp. 
“And many sleeping in feather beds that ain’t fit 
to ’old a candle to me. Not a hordinary farthing 
candle. ...” 

§ 5 

The subsequent hour or so was an interval of 
tedious tension for Bealby. 

After vast spaces of time he was suddenly 
aware of three vertical threads of light. He 
stared at them with mysterious awe, until he 
realized that they were just the moonshine 
streaming through the cracks of the shed. 

The tramp tossed and muttered in his sleep. 

Footsteps ? 

Yes — Footsteps. 

Then voices. 

They were coming along by the edge of the 
field, and coming and talking very discreetly. 

“Ugh!” said the tramp, and then softly, 
“ what’s that ? ” Then he too became noiselessly 
attentive. 


254 


BEALBY 


Bealby could hear his own heart beating. 

The men were now close outside the shed. 
“He wouldn’t go in there/’ said Mr. Benshaw’s 
voice. “He wouldn’t .dare. Anyhow we’ll go 
up by the glass first. I’ll let him have the whole 
barrelful of oats if I get a glimpse of him. If 
he’d gone away they’d have caught him in the 
road. . . .” 

The footsteps receded. There came a cautious 
rustling on the part of the tramp and then his 
feet padded softly to the door of the shed. He 
struggled to open it and then with a jerk got 
it open a few inches; a great bar of moonlight 
leapt and lay still across the floor of the shed. 
Bealby advanced his head cautiously until he 
could see the black obscure indications of the 
tramp’s back as he peeped out. 

whispered the tramp and opened the 
door wider. Then he ducked his head down and 
darted out of sight, leaving the door open behind 
him. 

Bealby questioned whether he should follow. 
He came out a few steps and then went back at 
a shout from away up the garden. “There he 
goes,” shouted a voice, “in the shadow of the 
hedge.” 

“Look out, Jim !” — Bang — and a yelp. 

“Stand away ! I’ve got another barrel !” 

Bang, 

Then silence for a time, and then the footsteps 
coming back, 

“That ought to teach him,” said Mr. Benshaw. 
“First time, I got him fair, and I think I peppered 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 255 


him a bit the second. Couldn^t see very well, 
but I heard him yell. He won^t forget that in a 
hurry. Not him. There^s nothing like oats 
for fruit stealers. Jim, just shut that door, 
will you? That’s where he was hiding. . . 

It seemed a vast time to Bealby before he 
ventured out into the summer moonlight, and a 
very pitiful and outcast little Bealby he felt him- 
self to be. 

He was beginning to realize what it means to 
go beyond the narrow securities of human society. 
He had no friends, no friends at all. . . . 

He caught at and arrested a sob of self-pity. 

Perhaps after all it was not so late as Bealby 
had supposed. There were still lights in some of 
the houses and he had the privilege of seeing Mr. 
Benshaw going to bed with pensive deliberation. 
Mr. Benshaw wore a flannel night-shirt and said 
quite a lengthy prayer before extinguishing his 
candle. Then suddenly Bealby turned ner- 
vously and made off through the hedge. A dog 
had barked. 

At first there were nearly a dozen lighted 
windows in Crayminster. They went out one 
by one. He hung for a long time with a passionate 
earnestness on the sole surviving one, but that 
too went at last. He could have wept when at 
last it winked out. He came down into the marshy 
flats by the river, but he did not like the way 
in which the water sucked and swirled in the 
vague moonlight ; also he suddenly discovered 
a great white horse standing quite still in the 
misty grass not thirty yards away ; so he went up 


256 


BEALBY 


to and crossed the high road and wardered up 
the hillside towards the allotments, ^JV'hich at- 
tracted him by reason of the sociability of the 
numerous tool sheds. In a hedge near at hand 
a young rabbit squealed sharply and was stilled. 
Why? 

Then something like a short snake scrabbled by 
very fast through the grass. 

Then he thought he saw the tramp stalking 
him noiselessly behind some currant bushes. 
That went on for some time, but came to nothing. 

Then nothing pursued him, nothing at all. 
The gap, the void, came after him. The bodiless, 
the faceless, the formless ; these are evil hunters 
in the night. . . . 

What a cold still watching thing moonlight can 

be! . . . 

He thought he would like to get his back 
against something solid, and found near one of 
the sheds a little heap of litter. He sat down 
against good tarred boards, assured at least 
that whatever came must come in front. What- 
ever he did, he was resolved, he would not shut 
his eyes. 

That would be fatal. . . . 

He awoke in broad daylight amidst a cheerful 
uproar of birds. 

§6 

And then again flight and pursuit were resumed. 

As Bealby went up the hill away from Cray- 
minster he saw a man standing over a spade and 
watching his retreat and when he looked back 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 257 


again presently this man was following. It was 
Lady Laxton^s five pound reward had done the 
thing for him. 

He was half minded to surrender and have done 
with it, but jail he knew was a dreadful thing 
of stone and darkness. He would make one last 
effort. So he beat along the edge of a plantation 
and then crossed it and forced his way through 
some gorse and came upon a sunken road, that 
crossed the hill in a gorse-lined cutting. He 
struggled down the steep bank. At its foot, re- 
gardless of him, unaware of him, a man sat beside 
a motor bicycle with his fists gripped tight and 
his head downcast, swearing. A county map 
was crumpled in his hand. ^^Damn!’^ he cried, 
and flung the map to the ground and kicked it 
and put his foot on it. 

Bealby slipped, came down the bank with a run 
and found himself in the road within a couple 
of yards of the blond features and angry eyes of 
Captain Douglas. When he saw the Captain and 
perceived himself recognized, he flopped down — 
a done and finished Bealby. . . . 

§7 

He had arrived just in time to interrupt the 
Captain in a wild and reprehensible fit of passion. 

The Captain imagined it was a secret fit of pas- 
sion. He thought he was quite alone and that 
no one could hear him or see him. So he had let 
himself shout and stamp, to work off the nervous 
tensions that tormented him beyond endurance, 
s 


258 


BEALBY 


In the direst sense of the words the Captain was 
in love with Madeleine. He was in love quite 
beyond the bounds set by refined and decorous 
people to this dangerous passion. The pri- 
mordial savage that lurks in so many of us was 
uppermost in him. He was not in love with her 
prettily or delicately, he was in love with her 
violently and vehemently. He wanted to be 
with her, he wanted to be close to her, he wanted 
to possess her and nobody else to approach her. 
He was so inflamed now that no other interest 
in life had any importance except as it aided or 
interfered with this desire. He had forced him- 
self in spite of this fever in his blood to leave 
her to pursue Bealby, and now he was regretting 
this firmness furiously. He had expected to 
catch Bealby overnight and bring him back to 
the hotel in triumph. But Bealby had been 
elusive. There she was, away there, hurt and 
indignant — neglected ! 

laggard in love,^’ cried the Captain, ‘^a 
dastard in war ! God ! — I run away from every- 
thing. First I leave the manoeuvres, then her. 
Unstable as water thou shalt not prevail. Water ! 
What does the confounded boy matter? What 
does he matter? 

‘^And there she is. Alone! She^ll flirt — 
naturally she^ll flirt. DonT I deserve it? 
HavenT I asked for it? Just the one little time 
we might have had together I I fling it in her 
face. You fool, you laggard, you dastard ! And 
here^s this map !” 

A breathing moment. 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 259 


^^How the devilj^^ cried the Captain, ^^am I to 
find the little beast on this map ? 

And twice he^s been within reach of my hand ! 

“No decision!^’ cried the Captain. “No in- 
stant grip ! What good is a soldier without it ? 
What good is any man who will not leap at 
opportunity? I ought to have chased out last 
night after that fool and his oats. Then I might 
have had a chance ! 

“ Chuck it ! Chuck the whole thing ! Go 
back to her. Kneel to her, kiss her, compel her ! 

“And what sort of reception am I likely to 
get?’^ 

He crumpled the flapping map in his fist. 

And then suddenly out of nowhere Bealby 
came rolling down to his feet, a dishevelled and 
earthy Bealby. But Bealby. 

“Good Lord!^^ cried the Captain, starting to 
his feet and holding the map like a sword sheath. 

“What do you want?^’ 

For a second Bealby was a silent spectacle of 
misery. 

“Oooh! I want my hreckfuss/^ he burst out 
at last, reduced to tears. 

“Are you young Bealby?^' asked the Captain, 
seizing him by the shoulder. 

“TheyTe after me,’’ cried Bealby. “If they 
catch me they’ll put me in prison. Where they 
don’t give you anything. It wasn’t me did it — 
and I ’aven’t had anything to eat — not since 
yesterday.” 

The Captain came rapidly to a decision. There 
should be no more faltering. He saw his way 


260 


BEALBY 


clear before him. He would act — like a whist- 
ling sword. ^^Here! jump up behind/^ he said 
. . . hold on tight to me. . . 

§8 

For a time there was a more than Napoleonic 
swiftness in the Captain^s movements. When 
Bealby’s pursuer came up to the hedge that looks 
down into the sunken road, there was no Bealby, 
no Captain, nothing but a torn and dishevelled 
county map, an almost imperceptible odour of 
petrol and a faint sound — like a distant mowing 
machine — and the motor bicycle was a mile 
away on the road to Beckinstone. Eight miles, 
eight rather sickening miles, Bealby did to Beck- 
instone in eleven minutes, and there in a little 
coffee house he was given breakfast with eggs 
and bacon and marmalade (Prime !), and his 
spirit was restored to him while the Captain 
raided a bicycle and repairing shop and nego- 
tiated the hire of an experienced but fairly com- 
fortable wickerwork trailer. And so, to London 
through the morning sunshine, leaving tramps, 
pursuers, policemen, handbills, bakers, market 
gardeners, terrors of the darkness and everything 
upon the road behind — and further behind and 
remote and insignificant — and so to the vanishing 
point. 

Some few words of explanation the Captain 
had vouchsafed, and that was all. 

^^Don^t be afraid about it,” he said. ^^Don^t 
be in the least bit afraid. You tell them about it. 


THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 261 


just simply and truthfully, exactly what you did, 
exactly how you got into it and out of it and all 
about it/’ 

‘‘You’re going to take me up to a Magistrate, 
sir?” 

“I’m going to take you up to the Lord Chan- 
cellor himself.” 

“And then they won’t do anything?” 

“Nothing at all, Bealby; you trust me. All 
you’ve got to do is to tell the simple truth. ...” 

It was pretty rough going in the trailer, but very 
exciting. If you gripped the sides very hard, and 
sat quite tight, nothing very much happened and 
also there was a strap across your chest. And 
you went past everything. There wasn’t a thing 
on the road the Captain didn’t pass, lowing deeply 
with his great horn when they seemed likely to 
block his passage. And as for the burglary and 
everything, it would all be settled. . . . 

The Captain also found that ride to London 
exhilarating. At least he was no longer hanging 
about ; he was getting to something. He would 
be able to go back to her — and all his being now 
yearned to go back to her — with things achieved, 
with successes to show. He’d found the boy. 
He would go straight to dear old uncle Chickney, 
and uncle Chickney would put things right with 
Moggeridge, the boy would bear his testimony, 
Moggeridge would be convinced and all would be 
well again. He might be back with Madeleine 
that evening. He would go back to her, and she 
would see the wisdom and energy of all he had 
done, and she would lift that dear chin of hers and 


262 


BEALBY 


smile that dear smile of hers and hold out her 
hand to be kissed and the lights and reflections 
would play on that strong soft neck of hers. . . . 

They buzzed along stretches of common and 
stretches of straight-edged meadowland, by woods 
and orchards, by pleasant inns and slumbering 
villages and the gates and lodges of country houses. 

These latter grew more numerous, and presently 
they skirted a town, and then more road, more 
villages and at last signs of a nearness to London, 
more frequent houses, more frequent inns, hoard- 
ings and advertisements, an asphalted sidewalk, 
lamps, a gasworks, laundries, a stretch of suburban 
villadom, a suburban railway station, a suburban- 
ized old town, an omnibus, the head of a tramline, 
a stretch of public common thick with notice- 
boards, a broad pavement, something-or-other 
parade, with a row of shops. . . . 

London. 


CHAPTER VIII 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 

§1 

Lord Chickney was only slightly older than 
Lord Moggeridge, but he had not worn nearly so 
well. His hearing was not good, though he would 
never admit it, and the loss of several teeth 
greatly affected his articulation. One might 
generalize and say that neither physically nor 
mentally do soldiers wear so well as lawyers. 
The army ages men sooner than the law and phi- 
losophy ; it exposes them more freely to germs, 
which undermine and destroy, and it shelters 
them more completely from thought, which 
stimulates and preserves. A lawyer must keep 
his law highly polished and up-to-date or he hears 
of it within a fortnight, a general never realizes 
he is out of training and behind the times until 
disaster is accomplished. Since the magnificent 
retreat from Bondy-Satina in eighty-seven and 
his five weeks defence of Barrowgast (with the 
subsequent operations) the abilities of Lord 
Chickney had never been exercised seriously 
at all. But there was a certain simplicity of 
manner and a tall drooping grizzled old-veteran 
picturesqueness about him that kept him dis- 
263 


264 


BEALBY 


tinguished; he was easy to recognize on public 
occasions on account of his long moustaches, 
and so he got pointed out when greater men were 
ignored. The autograph collectors adored him. 
Every morning he would spend half an hour 
writing autographs, and the habit was so strong 
in him that on Sundays, when there was no London 
post and autograph writing would have been 
wrong anyhow, he filled the time in copying out 
the epistle and gospel for the day. And he liked to 
be well in the foreground of public affairs — if 
possible wearing his decorations. After the auto- 
graphs he would work, sometimes for hours, for 
various patriotic societies and more particularly 
for those which would impose compulsory 
training upon every man, woman and child in 
the country. He even belonged to a society for 
drilling the butchers^ ponies and training big 
dogs as scouts. He did not understand how a 
country could be happy unless every city was 
fortified and every citizen wore side-arms, and 
the slightest error in his dietary led to the most 
hideous nightmares of the Channel Tunnel or 
reduced estimates and a land enslaved. He 
wrote and toiled for these societies, but he could 
not speak for them on account of his teeth. For 
he had one peculiar weakness ; he had faced 
death in many forms but he had never faced a 
dentist. The thought of dentists gave him just 
the same sick horror as the thought of invasion. 

He was a man of blameless private life, a 
widower and childless. In later years he had 
come to believe that he had once been very deeply 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


265 


in love with his cousin, Susan, who had married 
a rather careless husband named Douglas; both 
she and Douglas were dead now, but he main- 
tained a touching affection for her two lively 
rather than satisfying sons. He called them 
his nephews, and by the continuous attrition of 
affection he had become their recognized uncle. He 
was glad when they came to him in their scrapes, 
and he liked to be seen about with them in public 
places. They regarded him with considerable 
confidence and respect and an affection that they 
sometimes blamed themselves for as not quite 
warm enough for his merits. But there is a 
kind of injustice about affection. 

He was really gratified when he got a wire 
from the less discreditable of these two bright 
young relations, saying, Sorely in need of your 
advice. Hope to bring difficulties to you to-day 
at twelve.’’ 

He concluded very naturally that the boy had 
come to some crisis in his unfortunate entangle- 
ment with Madeleine Philips, and he was flattered 
by the trustfulness that brought the matter to 
him. He resolved to be delicate but wily, honour- 
able, strictly honourable, but steadily, patiently 
separative. He paced his spacious study with 
his usual morning’s work neglected, and rehearsed 
little sentences in his mind that might be effective 
in the approaching interview. There would prob- 
ably be emotion. He would pat the lad on his 
shoulder and be himself a little emotional. ‘‘1 
understand, my boy,” he would say, “I under- 
stand. 


266 


BEALBY 


Don^t forget; my boy, that I Ve been a young 
man too/’ 

He would be emotional, he would be sym- 
pathetic, but also he must be a man of the world. 
^^Sort of thing that won’t do, you know, my boy; 
sort of thing that people will not stand. ... A 
soldier’s wife has to be a soldier’s wife and nothing 
else. . . . Your business is to serve the king, 
not — not some celebrity. Lovely, no doubt. 
I don’t deny the charm of her — but on the 
hoardings, my boy. ... Now don’t you think 
— don’t you think ? — there’s some nice pure 
girl somewhere, sweet as violets, new as the dawn, 
and ready to be yours; a girl, I mean, a maiden 
fancy free, not — how shall I put it ? — a woman 
of the world. Wonderful, I admit — but seasoned. 
Public. My dear, dear boy, I knew your mother 
when she was a girl, a sweet pure girl — a thing of 
dewy freshness. Ah ! Well I remember her ! 
All these years, my boy — Nothing. It’s diffi- 
cult. . . .” 

Tears stood in his brave old blue eyes as he 
elaborated such phrases. He went up and down 
mumbling them through the defective teeth and 
the long moustache and waving an eloquent 
hand. 

§2 

When Lord Chickney’s thoughts had once 
started in any direction it was difficult to turn 
them aside. No doubt that concealed and re- 
pudiated deafness helped his natural perplexity 
of mind. Truth comes to some of us as a still 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


267 


small voice, but Lord Chickney needed shouting 
and prods. And Douglas did not get to him 
until he was finishing lunch. Moreover, it was 
the weakness of Captain Douglas to talk in 
jerky fragments and undertones, rather than 
clearly and fully in the American fashion. “Tell 
me all about it, my boy,^^ said Lord Chick- 
ney. “Tell me all about it. DonT apologize 
for your clothes. I understand. Motor bicycle 
and just come up. But have you had any lunch, 
Eric?’^ 

“Alan, uncle, — not Eric. My brother is Eric.’^ 

“AYell, I called him Alan. Tell me all about 
it. Tell me what has happened. What are you 
thinking of doing? Just put the positions before 
me. To tell you the truth IVe been worrying 
over this business for some time.’^ 

“DidnT know you’d heard of it, uncle. He 
can’t have talked about it already. Anyhow, — 
you see all the awkwardness of the situation. 
They say the old chap’s a thundering spiteful 
old devil when he’s roused — and there’s no 
doubt he was roused. . . . Tremendously. . . .” 

Lord Chickney was not listening very atten- 
tively. Indeed he was also talking. “Not clear 
to me there was another man in it,” he was saying. 
“ That makes it more complicated, my boy, makes 
the row acuter. Old fellow, eh? Who?” 

They came to a pause at the same moment. 

“You speak so indistinctly,” complained Lord 
Chickney. “TF/io did you say?” 

“I thought you understood. Lord Mogger- 
idge,” 


268 


BEALBY 


^^Lord — ! Lord Moggeridge ! My dear Boy ! 
But how?’^ 

thought you understood, uncle/’ 

He doesn’t want to marry her ! Tut ! N ever ! 
Why, the man must be sixty if he’s a day. . . 

Captain Douglas regarded his distinguished 
uncle for a moment with distressed eyes. Then he 
came nearer, raised his voice and spoke more 
deliberately. 

“I don’t know whether you quite understand, 
uncle. I am talking about this affair at Shonts 
last week-end.” 

^^My dear boy, there’s no need for you to 
shout. If only 3^ou don’t mumble and clip your 
words — and turn head over heels with your ideas. 
Just tell me about it plainly. Who is Shonts? 
one of those Liberal peers? I seem to have 
heard the name. . . .” 

“Shonts, uncle, is the house the Laxtons have; 
you know, — Lucy.” 

“ Little Lucy ! I remember her. Curls all 
down her back. Married the milkman. But 
how does she come in, Alan? The story’s get- 
ting — complicated. But that’s the worst of these 
infernal affairs, — they always do get compli- 
cated. Tangled skeins — 

^ Oh what a tangled web we weave, 

When first we venture to deceive.’ 

“And now, like a sensible man, you want to 
get out of it.” 

Captain Douglas was bright pink with the 
effort to control himself and keep perfectly plain 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


269 


and straightforward. His hair had become like 
tow and little beads of perspiration stood upon 
his forehead. 

“I spent last week-end at Shonts/’ he said. 
^^Lord Moggeridge, also there, week-ending. Got 
it into his head that I was pulling his leg.^^ 

Naturally, my boy, if he goes philandering. 
At his time of life. What else can he expect?^’ 
^^It wasn^t philandering.^^ 

“Fine distinctions. Fine distinctions. Go on 
— anyhow.’^ 

“He got it into his head that I was playing 
practical jokes upon him. Confused me with 
Eric. It led to a rather first-class row. I had 
to get out of the house. Nothing else to do. He 
brought all sorts of accusations — 

Captain Douglas stopped short. His uncle 
was no longer attending to him. They had 
drifted to the window of the study and the general 
was staring with an excitement and intelligence 
that grew visibly at the spectacle of Bealby and 
the trailer outside. For Bealby had been left 
in the trailer, and he was sitting as good as gold 
waiting for the next step in his vindication from 
the dark charge of burglary. He was very travel- 
worn and the trailer was time-worn as well as 
travel-worn, and both contrasted with the efficient 
neatness and newness of the motor bicycle in 
front. The contrast had attracted the attention 
of a tall policeman who was standing in a state 
of elucidatory meditation regarding Bealby. 
Bealby was not regarding the policeman. He 
had the utmost confidence in Captain Douglas, 


270 


BEALBY 


he felt sure that he would presently be purged of 
all the horror of that dead old man and of the 
brief unpremeditated plunge into crime, but still 
for the present at any rate he did not feel equal to 
staring a policeman out of countenance. . . . 

From the window the policeman very largely 
obscured Bealby. . . . 

Whenever hearts are simple there lurks romance. 
Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite 
diversity. Suddenly out of your low kindly 
diplomacies, your sane man-of-the- world inten- 
tions, leaps the imagination like a rocket, flying 
from such safe securities bang into the sky. So 
it happened to the old general. He became 
deaf to everything but the appearances before 
him. The world was jewelled with dazzling and 
delightful possibilities. His face was lit by a 
glow of genuine romantic excitement. He grasped 
his nephew^s arm. He pointed. His grizzled 
cheeks flushed. 

^^That isnT,^' he asked with something verging 
upon admiration in his voice and manner, ^^a 
Certain Lady in disguise?’’ 

§3 

It became clear to Captain Douglas that if 
ever he was to get to Lord Moggeridge that day 
he must take his uncle firmly in hand. Without 
even attempting not to appear to shout he cried, 
^^That is a little Boy. That is my Witness. It 
is Most Important that I should get him to Lord 
Moggeridge to tell his Story.” 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


271 


‘^WLat story cried the old commander, 
pulling at his moustache and still eyeing Bealby 
suspiciously. . . . 

It took exactly half an hour to get Lord Chick- 
ney from that enquiry to the telephone and even 
then he was still far from clear about the matter 
in hand. Captain Douglas got in most of the 
facts, but he could not eliminate an idea that it 
all had to do with Madeleine. Whenever he 
tried to say clearly that she was entirely outside 
the question, the general patted his shoulder and 
looked very wise and kind and said, ^^My dear 
Boy, I quite understand ; I quite understand. 
Never mention a lady. 

So they started at last rather foggily — so far 
as things of the mind went, though the sun that 
day was brilliant — and because of engine trouble 
in Port Street the generaPs hansom reached 
Tenby Little Street first and he got in a good 
five minutes preparing the Lord Chancellor tact- 
fully and carefully before the bicycle and its 
trailer came upon the scene. . . . 

§4 

Candler had been packing that morning with 
unusual solicitude for a week-end at Tulliver 
Abbey. His master had returned from the catas- 
trophe of Shonts, fatigued and visibly aged and 
extraordinarily cross, and Candler looked to 
Tulliver Abbey to restore him to his former self. 
Nothing must be forgotten; there must be no 
little hitches, everything from first to last must 


272 


BEALBY 


go on oiled wheels, or it was clear his Lordship 
might develop a desperate hostility to these 
excursions, excursions which Candler found sin- 
gularly refreshing and entertaining during the 
stresses of the session. Tulliver Abbey was as 
good a house as Shonts was bad; Lady Check- 
sammington ruled with the softness of velvet 
and the strength of steel over a household of 
admirably efficient domestics, and there would 
be the best of people there, Mr. Evesham perhaps, 
the Loopers, Lady Privet, Andreas Doria and 
Mr. Pernambuco, great silken mellow personages 
and diamond-like individualities, amidst whom 
Lord Moggeridge^s mind would be restfully active 
and his comfort quite secure. And as far as 
possible Candler wanted to get the books and 
papers his master needed into the trunk or the 
small valise. That habit of catching up every- 
thing at the last moment and putting it under 
his arm and the consequent need for alert picking 
up, meant friction and nervous wear and tear 
for both master and man. 

Lord Moggeridge rose at half-past ten — he 
had been kept late overnight by a heated discus- 
sion at the Aristotelian — and breakfasted lightly 
upon a chop and coffee. Then something ruffled 
him ; something that came with the letters. 
Candler could not quite make out what it was, 
but he suspected another pamphlet by Dr. Schiller. 
It could not be the chop, because Lord Moggeridge 
was always wonderfully successful with chops. 
Candler looked through the envelopes and letters 
afterwards and found nothing diagnostic, and 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


273 


then he observed a copy of Mind torn across and 
lying in the waste-paper basket. 

When I went out of the room/^ said Candler, 
discreetly examining this. “Very likely it^s that 
there Schiller after all.^^ 

But in this Candler was mistaken. What had 
disturbed the Lord Chancellor was a coarsely 
disrespectful article on the Absolute by a Cam- 
bridge Rhodes scholar, written in that flighty 
facetious strain that spreads now like a pestilence 
over modern philosophical discussion. “ Does the 
Absolute, on Lord Moggeridge’s own showing, 
mean anything more than an eloquent oiliness 
uniformly distributed through space and so on. 

Pretty bad ! 

Lord Moggeridge early in life had deliberately 
acquired a quite exceptional power of mental 
self-control. He took his perturbed mind now 
and threw it forcibly into the consideration of a 
case upon which he had reserved judgment. He 
was to catch the 3.35 at Paddington, and at two 
he was smoking a cigar after a temperate lunch 
and reading over the notes of this judgment. 
It was then that the telephone bell became aud- 
ible, and Candler came in to inform him that Lord 
Chickney was anxious to see him at once upon a 
matter of some slight importance. 

“Slight importance?’^ asked Lord Moggeridge. 

“Some slight importance, my lord.” 

“Some? Slight?” 

“ ’Is Lordship, my lord, mumbles rather now 
’is back teeth ’ave gone,” said Candler, “but so 
I understand ’im.” 


274 


BEALBY 


These apologetic assertive phrases annoy me, 
Candler,^’ said Lord Moggeridge over his shoulder. 
^^You see,’’ he turned round and spoke very 
clearly, either the matter is of importance or 
it is not of importance. A thing must either be 
or not be. I wish you would manage — when 
you get messages on the telephone — ... But 
I suppose that is asking too much. . . . Will 
you explain to him, Candler, when we start, 
and — ask him, Candler — ask him what sort of 
matter it is.” 

Candler returned after some parleying. 

“So far as I can make ’is Lordship out, my 
lord, ’e says ’e wants to set you right about 
something, my lord. He says something about 
a little misapprehension.” 

“These diminutives, Candler, kill sense. Does 
he say what sort — what sort — of little mis- 
apprehension ? ” 

“He says something — I’m sorry, my lord, 
but it’s about Shonts, me lord.” 

“Then I don’t want to hear about it,” said 
Lord Moggeridge. 

There was a pause. The Lord Chancellor 
resumed his reading with a deliberate obvious- 
ness; the butler hovered. 

“I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t think exactly 
what I ought to say to ’is lordship, my lord.” 

“Tell him — tell him that I do not wish to 
hear anything more about Shonts for ever. 
Simply.” 

Candler hesitated and went out, shutting the 
door carefully lest any fragment of his halting 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


275 


rendering of this message to Lord Chickney 
should reach his master^s ears. 

Lord Moggeridge^s powers of mental control 
were, I say, very great — He could dismiss 
subjects from his mind absolutely. In a few 
instants he had completely forgotten Shonts and 
was making notes with a silver-cased pencil on 
the margins of his draft judgment. 

§5 

He became aware that Candler had returned. 

’Is lordship. Lord Chickney, my lord, is very 
persistent, my lord. ^E^s rung up twice. ’E says 
now that ^e makes a personal matter of it. Come 
what may, ’e says, ^e wishes to speak for two 
minutes to your lordship. Over the telephone, 
my lord, ^e vouchsafes no further information.^^ 

Lord Moggeridge meditated over the end of 
his third after lunch cigar. His man watched 
the end of his left eyebrow as an engineer might 
watch a steam gauge. There were no signs of 
an explosion. ^^He must come, Candler, his 
lordship said at last. . . . 

“Oh, Candler ! 

“ My lord 

“Put the bags and things in a conspicuous 
position in the haU, Candler. Change yourself, 
and see that you look thoroughly like trains. 
And in fact have everything ready, 'prominently 
ready, Candler.’’ 

Then once more Lord Moggeridge concen- 
trated his mind. 


276 


BEALBY 


§6 

To him there presently entered Lord Chick- 
ney. 

Lord Chickney had been twice round the world 
and he had seen many strange and dusky peoples 
and many remarkable customs and peculiar preju- 
dices, which he had never failed to despise, but he 
had never completely shaken off the county family 
ideas in which he had been brought up. He 
believed that there was an incurable difference 
in spirit between quite good people like himself 
and men from down below like Moggeridge, who 
was the son of an Exeter chorister. He believed 
that these men from nowhere always cherished 
the profoundest respect for the real thing like 
himself, that they were greedy for association and 
gratified by notice, and so for the life of him he 
could not approach Lord Moggeridge without a 
faint sense of condescension. He saluted him as 
‘^my dear Lord Moggeridge,’’ wrung his hand 
with effusion, and asked him kind, almost dis- 
trict-visiting, questions about his younger brother 
and the aspect of his house. ^^And you are just 
off, I see, for a week-end.” 

These amenities the Lord Chancellor acknowl- 
edged by faint gruntings and an almost imper- 
ceptible movement of his eyebrows. There was 
a matter,” he said, '^some little matter, on which 
you want to consult me?” 

^^Well,” said Lord Chickney, and rubbed his 
chin. ^^Yes. Yes, there was a little matter, a 
little trouble — ” 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


277 


an urgent nature/’ 

^^Yes. Yes. Exactly. Just a little compli- 
cated, you know, not quite simple.” The dear 
old soldier’s manner became almost seductive. 
^^One of these difficult little affairs, where one 
has to remember that one is a man of the world, 
you know. A little complication about a lady, 
known to you both. But one must make con- 
cessions, one must understand. The boy has a 
witness. Things are not as you supposed them 
to be.” 

Lord Moggeridge had a clean conscience about 
ladies ; he drew out his watch and looked at it — 
aggressively. He kept it in his hand during his 
subsequent remarks. 

“1 must confess,” he declared, have not 
the remotest idea. ... If you will be so good 
as to be — elementary. What is it all about?” 

^^You see, I knew the lad’s mother,” said Lord 
Chickney. ‘‘In fact — ” He became insanely 
confidential — Under happier circumstances — 
don’t misunderstand me, Moggeridge ; I mean no 
evil — but he might have been my son. I feel 
for him like a son. . . .” 


§7 

When presently Captain Douglas, a little 
heated from his engine trouble, came into the 
room — he had left Bealby with Candler in the 
hall — it was instantly manifest to him that the 
work of preparation had been inadequately per- 
formed. 


278 


BEALBY 


^^One minute more, my dear Alan/’ cried Lord 
Chickney. 

Lord Moggeridge with eyebrows waving and 
watch in hand was of a different opinion. He 
addressed himself to Captain Douglas. 

There isn’t a minute more/’ he said. ^^What 
is all this — this philoprogenitive rigmarole about ? 
Why have you come to me? My cab is outside 
now. All this about ladies and witnesses ; — 
what is it?” 

Perfectly simple, my lord! You imagine 
that I played practical jokes upon you at Shonts. 
I didn’t. I have a witness. The attack upon 
* you downstairs, the noise in your room — ” 

'^Have I any guarantee — ?” 

^Ht’s the steward’s boy from Shonts. Your 
man outside knows him. Saw him in the stew- 
ard’s room. He made the trouble for you — 
and me, and then he ran away. Just caught 
him. Not exchanged thirty words with him. 
Half a dozen questions. Settle everything. 
Then you’ll know — nothing for you but the 
utmost respect.” 

Lord Moggeridge pressed his lips together and 
resisted conviction. 

‘Hn consideration,” interpolated Lord Chick- 
ney, ^Teelings of an old fellow. Old soldier. 
Boy means no harm.” 

With the rudeness of one sorely tried the Lord 
Chancellor thrust the old general aside. ^^Oh!” 
he said, ^^Oh!” and then to Captain Douglas. 
^^One minute. Where’s your witness? . . .” 

The Captain opened a door. Bealby found 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


279 


himself bundled into the presence of two cele- 
brated men. 

''Tell him/’ said Captain Douglas. "And 
look sharp about it.” 

"Tell me plainly/’ cried the Lord Chancellor; 
"and be — quick 

He put such a point on "quick” that it made 
Bealby jump. 

"Tell him,” said the general more gently. 
"Don’t be afraid.” 

"Well,” began Bealby after one accumulating 
pause, "it was ’im told me to do it. ’E said you 
go in there — ” 

The Captain would have interrupted but the 
Lord Chancellor restrained him by a magnificent 
gesture of the hand holding the watch. 

"He told you to do it !” he said. "I knew he 
did. Now listen ! He told you practically to 
go in and do anything you could.” 

"Yessir.” Woe took possession of Bealby. 
"I didn’t do any ’arm to the ole gentleman.” 

" But who told you ? ” cried the Captain. " Who 
told you?” 

Lord Moggeridge annihilated him with arm 
and eyebrows. He held Bealby fascinated by a 
pointing finger. 

"Don’t do more than answer the questions. I 
have thirty seconds more. He told you to go in. 
He made you go in. At the earliest possible 
opportunity you got away?” 

"I jest nipped out — ” 

" Enough ! And now, sir, how dare you come 
here without even a plausible lie? How dare 


280 


BEALBY 


you after your intolerable tomfoolery at Shouts 
confront me again with fresh tomfoolery? How 
dare you drag in your gallant and venerable 
uncle in this last preposterous — I suppose you 
would call it — lark ! I suppose you had prepared 
that little wretch with some fine story. Little 
you know of False Witness ! At the first ques- 
tion, he breaks down ! He does not even begin 
his lie. He at least knows the difference between 
my standards and yours. Candler! Candler 

Candler appeared. 

‘'These — these gentlemen are going. Is every- 
thing ready 

“The cab is at the door, m’lord. The usual 
cab.^' 

Captain Douglas made one last desperate 
effort. “Sir!^^ he said. “My lord — 

The Lord Chancellor turned upon him with a 
face that he sought to keep calm, though the eye- 
brows waved and streamed like black smoke in a 
gale. “Captain Douglas,’^ he said, “you are 
probably not aware of the demands upon the 
time and patience of a public servant in such a 
position as mine. You see the world no doubt 
as a vastly entertaining fabric upon which you 
can embroider your — your facetious arrange- 
ments. Well, it is not so. It is real. It is 
earnest. You may sneer at the simplicity of an 
old man, but what I tell you of life is true. Comic 
effect is not, believe me, its goal. And you, sir, 
you, sir, you impress me as an intolerably foolish, 
flippant and unnecessary young man. Flippant. 
Unnecessary. Foolish.’^ 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


281 


As he said these words Candler approached 
him with a dust coat of a peculiar fineness and 
dignity, and he uttered the last words over his 
protruded chest while Candler assisted his arms 
into his sleeves. 

^^My lord,’^ said Captain Douglas again, but 
his resolution was deserting him. 

said the Lord Chancellor, leaning for- 
ward in a minatory manner while Candler pulled 
down the tail of his jacket and adjusted the collar 
of his overcoat. 

Uncle,” said Captain Douglas. 

said the general, with the curt decision 
of a soldier, and turned exactly ninety degrees 
away from him. You little know how you have 
hurt me, Alan ! You little know. I couldn^t 
have imagined it. The Douglas strain ! False 
Witness — and insult. I am sorry, my dear 
Moggeridge, beyond measure.” 

quite understand — you are as much a 
victim as myself. Quite. A more foolish 
attempt — I am sorry to be in this hurry — ” 

^^Oh! You damned little fool,” said the Cap- 
tain, and advanced a step towards the perplexed 
and shrinking Bealby. '^You imbecile little 
trickster! What do you mean by it?” 
didnT mean anything — !” 

Then suddenly the thought of Madeleine, 
sweet and overpowering, came into the head of 
this distraught young man. He had risked losing 
her, he had slighted and insulted her, and here he 
was — entangled. Here he was in a position 
of nearly inconceivable foolishness, about to 


282 


BEALBY 


assault a dirty and silly little boy in the presence 
of the Lord Chancellor and Uncle Chickney. 
The world, he felt, was lost, and not well lost. 
And she was lost too. Even now while he pur- 
sued these follies she might be consoling her 
wounded pride. . . . 

He perceived that love is the supreme thing 
in life. He perceived that he who divides his 
purposes scatters his life to the four winds of 
heaven. A vehement resolve to cut the whole of 
this Bealby business pounced upon him. In 
that moment he ceased to care for reputation, 
for appearances, for the resentment of Lord 
Moggeridge or the good intentions of Uncle 
Chickney. 

He turned, he rushed out of the room. He 
escaped by unparalleled gymnastics the worst 
consequences of an encounter with the Lord 
Chancellor's bag which the under-butler had 
placed rather tactlessly between the doors, crossed 
the wide and dignified hall, and in another moment 
had his engine going and was struggling to mount 
his machine in the street without. His face 
expressed an almost apoplectic concentration. 
He narrowly missed the noses of a pair of horses 
in the carriage of Lady Beach Mandarin, made 
an extraordinary curve to spare a fishmonger's 
tricycle, shaved the front and completely de- 
stroyed the gesture of that eminent actor manager, 
Mr. Pomegranate, who was crossing the road in 
his usual inadvertent fashion, and then he was 
popping and throbbing and banging round the 
comer and on his way back to the lovely and 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


283 


irresistible woman who was exerting so disastrous 
an influence upon his career. . . . 

§8 

The Captain fled from London in the utmost 
fury and to the general danger of the public. 
His heart was full of wicked blasphemies, shout- 
ings and self-reproaches, but outwardly he seemed 
only pinkly intent. And as he crossed an open 
breezy common and passed by a milestone bear- 
ing this inscription, '‘To London Thirteen Miles,’’ 
his hind tyre burst conclusively with a massive 
report. . . . 

§9 

In every life there are crucial moments, turning 
points, and not infrequently it is just such a 
thing as this, a report, a sudden waking in the 
night, a flash upon the road to Damascus, that 
marks and precipitates the accumulating new. 
Vehemence is not concentration. The headlong 
violence of the Captain had been no expression of 
a single-minded purpose, of a soul all gathered 
together to an end. Far less a pursuit had it 
been than a flight, a flight from his own dissen- 
sions. And now — now he was held. 

After he had attempted a few plausible repairs 
and found the tyre obdurate, after he had ad- 
dressed ill-chosen remonstrances to some un- 
named hearer, after he had walked some way 
along the road and back in an indecision about 
repair shops in some neighbouring town, the last 


284 


BEALBY 


dregs of his resistance were spent. He perceived 
that he was in the presence of a Lesson. He sat 
down by the roadside, some twenty feet from the 
disabled motor bicycle and, impotent for further 
effort, frankly admitted himself overtaken. He 
had not reckoned with punctures. 

The pursuing questions came clambering upon 
him and would no longer be denied ; who he was 
and what he was and how he was, and the meaning 
of this Rare Bate he had been in, and all those 
deep questions that are so systematically neg- 
lected in the haste and excitement of modern 
life. 

In short, for the first time in many headlong 
days he asked himself simply and plainly what 
he thought he was up to ? 

Certain things became clear, and so minutely 
and exactly clear that it was incredible that they 
had ever for a moment been obscure. Of course 
Bealby had been a perfectly honest little boy, 
under some sort of misconception, and of course 
he ought to have been carefully coached and 
prepared and rehearsed before he was put before 
the Lord Chancellor. This was so manifest now 
that the Captain stared aghast at his own incon- 
ceivable negligence. But the mischief was done. 
Nothing now would ever propitiate Moggeridge, 
nothing now would ever reconcile Uncle Chickney. 
That was — settled. But what was not settled 
was the amazing disorder of his own mind. Why 
had he been so negligent, what had come over 
his mind in the last few weeks ? 

And this sudden strange illumination of the 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


285 


Captain^s mind went so far as perceiving that 
the really important concern for him was not 
the accidents of Shonts but this epilepsy of his 
own will. Why now was he rushing back to 
Madeleine? Why? He did not love her. He 
knew he did not love her. On the whole, more 
than anything else he resented her. 

But he was excited about her, he was so excited 
that these other muddles, fluctuations, follies, 
came as a natural consequence from that. Out 
of this excitement came those wild floods of angry 
energy that made him career about — 

^^Like some damned Cracker,’’ said the Captain. 

^^For instance,” he asked himself, ^^now! what 
am I going for? 

^Hf I go back she’ll probably behave like an 
offended Queen. Doesn’t seem to understand 
anything that does not focus on herself. Wants a 
sort of Limelight Lover. . . . 

''She relies upon exciting me! 

"She relies upon exciting everyone! — she’s 
Just a woman specialized for excitement.” 

And after meditating through a profound 
minute upon this Judgment, the Captain pro- 
nounced these two epoch-making words: "/ 
wonHr^ 

§10 

The Captain’s mind was now in a state of 
almost violent lucidity. 

"This sex stuff,” he said ; "first I kept it under 
too tight and now I’ve let it rip too loose. 

"I’ve been Just a distracted fool, with my head 


286 


BEALBY 


swimming with meetings and embraces and — 
MUs” 

He produced some long impending generaliza- 
tions. 

‘^Not a man^s work, this Lover business. 
Dancing about in a world of petticoats and pow- 
der puffs and attentions and jealousies. Rotten 
game. Played off against some other man. . . . 

111 be hanged if I am. . . . 

^^Have to put women in their places. . . . 

^'Make a hash of everything if we don^t. . . 

Then for a time the Captain meditated in 
silence and chewed his knuckle. His face dark- 
ened to a scowl. He swore as though some 
thought twisted and tormented him. ^^Let some 
other man get her ! Think of her with some 
other man.^’ 

donT care,’’ he said, when obviously he did. 

There’s other women in the world. 

A man — a man mustn’t care for that. . . . 

“It’s this or that,” said the Captain, “any- 
how. . . 

§11 

Suddenly the Captain’s mind was made up 
and done. 

He arose to his feet and his face was firm and 
tranquil and now nearer pallor than pink. He 
left his bicycle and trailer by the wayside even as 
Christian left his burden. He asked a passing 
nurse-girl the way to the nearest railway station, 
and thither he went. Incidentally, and because 
the opportunity offered, he called in upon a 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


287 


cyclist^s repair shop and committed his abandoned 
machinery to its keeping. He went straight to 
London, changed at his flat, dined at his club, and 
caught the night train for France — for France 
and whatever was left of the grand manoeuvres. 

He wrote a letter to Madeleine from the Est 
train next day, using their customary endearments, 
avoiding any discussion of their relations and 
describing the scenery of the Seine valley and the 
characteristics of Rouen in a few vivid and mas- 
terly phrases. 

^Mf she’s worth having, she’ll understand,” 
said the Captain, but he knew perfectly well she 
would not understand. 

Mrs. Geedge noted this letter among the others, 
and afterwards she was much exercised by Made- 
leine’s behaviour. For suddenly that lady be- 
came extraordinarily gay and joyous in her bear- 
ing, singing snatches of song and bubbling over 
with suggestions for larks and picnics and wild 
excursions. She patted Mr. Geedge on the 
shoulder and ran her arm through the arm of 
Professor Bowles. Both gentlemen received these 
familiarities with a gawky coyness that Mrs. 
Geedge found contemptible. And moreover 
Madeleine drew several shy strangers into their 
circle. She invited the management to a happy 
participation. 

Her great idea was a moonlight picnic. We’ll 
have a great camp-fire and afterwards we’ll dance 
— this very night.” 

^‘But wouldn’t it be better to-morrow?” 

To-night!” 


288 


BEALBY 


To-morrow perhaps Captain Douglas may 
be back again. And he^s so good at all these 
things.” 

Mrs. Geedge knew better because she had seen 
the French stamp on the letter, but she meant to 
get to the bottom of this business, and thus it 
was she said this. 

^^IVe sent him back to his soldiering,” said 
Madeleine serenely. ^^He has better things to 
do.” 

§12 

For some moments after the unceremonious 
departure of Captain Douglas from the presence 
of Lord Moggeridge, it did not occur to anyone, 
it did not occur even to Bealby, that the Captain 
had left his witness behind him. The general 
and the Lord Chancellor moved into the hall, 
and Bealby, under the sway of a swift compelling 
gesture from Candler, followed modestly. The 
same current swept them all out into the portico, 
and while the under-butler whistled up a hansom 
for the General, the Lord Chancellor, with a dig- 
nity that was at once polite and rapid, and Candler 
gravely protective and little reproving, departed. 
Bealby, slowly apprehending their desertion, re- 
garded the world of London with perplexity and 
dismay. Candler had gone. The last of the 
gentlemen was going. The under-butler, Bealby 
felt, was no friend. Under-butlers never are. 

Lord Chickney in the very act of entering his 
cab had his coat-tail tugged. He looked en- 
quiringly. 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


289 


Please, sir, there’s me/’ said Bealby. 

Lord Chickney reflected. ^^Well?” he said. 

The spirit of Bealby was now greatly abased. 
His face and voice betrayed him on the verge of 
tears. want to go ’ome to Shonts, sir.” 

^^Well, my boy, go ’ome — go home, I mean, 
to Shonts.” 

‘^’E’s gone, sir,” said Bealby. . . . 

Lord Chickney was a good-hearted man, and 
he knew that a certain public kindliness and dis- 
regard of appearances looks far better and is 
infinitely more popular than a punctilious dignity. 
He took Bealby to Waterloo in his hansom, got 
him a third class ticket to Chelsome, tipped a 
porter to see him safely into his train and dis- 
missed him in the most fatherly manner. 

§13 

It was well after tea-time, Bealby felt, as he 
came once more within the boundaries of the 
Shonts estate. 

It was a wiser and a graver Bealby who returned 
from this week of miscellaneous adventure. He 
did not clearly understand all that had happened 
to him ; in particular he was puzzled by the ex- 
treme annoyance and sudden departure of Captain 
Douglas from the presence of Lord Moggeridge ; 
but his general impression was that he had been 
in great peril of dire punishment and that he had 
been rather hastily and ignominiously reprieved. 
The nice old gentleman with the long grey mous- 
taches had dismissed him to the train at last 


290 


BEALBY 


with a quality of benediction. But Bealby 
understood now better than he had done before 
that adventures do not always turn out well 
for the boy hero, and that the social system has 
a number of dangerous and disagreeable holes at 
the bottom. He had reached the beginnings of 
wisdom. He was glad he had got away from the 
tramp and still gladder that he had got away from 
Crayminster; he was sorry that he would never 
see the beautiful lady again, and perplexed and 
^‘perplexed. And also he was interested in the 
probability of his mother having toast for tea. . . . 

It must, he felt, be a long time after tea-time, 
quite late. . . . 

He had weighed the advisability of returning 
quietly to his windowless bedroom under the 
stairs, putting on his little green apron and 
emerging with a dutiful sang-froid as if nothing 
had happened, on the one hand, or of going to 
the gardens on the other. But tea — with 
eatables — seemed more probable at the gar- 
dens. . . . 

He was deflected from the direct route across 
the park by a long deep trench, that someone had 
made and abandoned since the previous Sunday 
morning. He wondered what it was for. It was 
certainly very ugly. And as he came out by the 
trees and got the full effect of the fagade, he 
detected a strangely bandaged quality about 
Shonts. It was as if Shonts had recently been in 
a fight and got a black eye. Then he saw the 
reason for this ; one tower was swathed in scaf- 
folding. He wondered what could have happened 


HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 


291 


to the tower. Then his own troubles resumed 
their sway. 

He was so fortunate as not to meet his father 
in the gardens, and he entered the house so meekly 
that his mother did not look up from the cash- 
mere she was sewing. She was sitting at the 
table sewing some newly dyed black cashmere. 

He was astonished at her extreme pallor and 
the drooping resignation of her pose. 

“Mother!’’ he said, and she looked up convul- 
sively and stared, stared with bright round 
astonished eyes. 

“ I’m sorry, mother, I ’aven’t been quite a good 
steward’s-room boy, mother. If I could ’ave 
another go, mother. ...” 

He halted for a moment, astonished that she 
said nothing, but only sat with that strange ex- 
pression and opened and shut her mouth. 

“ Heely — I’d try, mother. . . 



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